Breakfast Like a King: 2 Large Meals Benefit Diabetes
May. 19, 2014 Medscape
Eating just 2 large meals a day, consisting of breakfast and lunch, could be the best way for people with type 2 diabetes to help control their weight and their blood sugar, new research suggests.
“We’ve turned the common wisdom, that eating little and often is best, upside down,” lead author of the study Hana Kahleová, MD, from the Diabetes Center, Prague, the Czech Republic, told Medscape Medical News.
“Mostly it has been recommended for people with type 2 diabetes to eat 5 or 6 small meals a day,” she explained, “but in Western societies at least, it turns out that snacks are not healthy, they are high in sugar and fat. So a regimen of frequent eating hasn’t resulted in better control.”
Recent studies, however, including some in animals and some observational trials, have begun to suggest that eating fewer, but larger, meals may be more beneficial, she noted. “We’ve taken the pieces of scientific evidence and put them together,” she commented, noting that her own work is the first interventional study to investigate this approach.