Home Eating Helps

Increasing how often you eat, and ensuring you consume breakfast, appears to help people avoid gaining excess weight - and may even help prevent obesity.

This is the case even after controlling for total energy intake and physical activity, a study has shown.

But the increase in the number of eating episodes needs to happen at home as the same study found that frequently eating breakfast or dinner away from home increased the risk of obesity.

The study, by the University of Massachusetts Medical School's Ma Yunsheng and colleagues, suggested that eating patterns are independently associated with obesity.

The researchers concluded: "In addition to energy intake and nutrient composition, future studies of diet and obesity should also explore the frequency of eating and the location of meals".

The researchers used data from a large study, the Seasonal Variation of Blood Cholesterol Study, and analysed the eating habits of 499 participants.

Forty-eight per cent of the men and 33 per cent of the women were overweight, and 27 per cent and 20 per cent were obese, respectively. The study participants were predominantly white (87.7 per cent), married (78.1 per cent), educated (39.8 per cent with a bachelor's degree or more), never smokers (84.8 per cent) and employed in white-collar occupations (37.4 per cent).

Compared with participants who reported eating three or fewer times a day, subjects who ate four or more times a day experienced a significantly lower risk (45 per cent!) of obesity.

On average, participants ate 3.92 times daily.

Higher education was significantly associated with lower risk of obesity; relative to those with a high school education or less.

Physical activity was inversely associated with obesity.

In contrast, age, race/ethnicity, gender, smoking status, occupational status and total energy intake were not appreciably associated with the risk of obesity.

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