Smarphone App Shows 3 Meals A Day Is A Myth
The study found that most folks were eating for 15 or more hours while awake, and the lion’s share of calories were eaten well after 6 p.m. The app then calculated the caloric intake and recorded the exact time when the food was consumed, as well as the place where it was consumed.
Satchidananda Panda, senior author of the current study and associate professor at Salk Institute, specializes in investigating the links between people’s circadian rhythm (or body clock) and health.
The result appears to be a formula for steady weight gain and metabolic disturbance.
“Most participants thought they don’t eat or drink that regularly outside their breakfast-lunch-dinner routine.”
The participants of the study were instructed to take a picture of everything they consumed, food or drink, using their smartphones. Each click of the edible item also provided the researchers with meta-data such as location and time of consumption. Reminders were sent daily to participants.
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Photos were collected over three weeks from people who signed up via online and print advertisements in the San Diego area.
Participants included 150 healthy men and women between 21 and 55 years old, with unmanaged diets, according to Pulse Headlines. People don’t eat three or four times during the day; they snack all the time. “For example, when taken next to a keyboard, in bed, watching TV, on the sidewalk, in the auto, or while filling gas”, he says.
A further role for the app, suggests Gill, could be in the implementation of personalized medicine strategies. The same held true for medication. The researchers found, unsurprisingly, that alcohol consumption peaks in the evening hours, whereas coffee and milk are beverages of the morning. Yoghurt was predominantly a morning food, while sandwiches and burgers were lunchtime favourites and vegetables and ice cream eaten at night.
But a new research project that prompts people to record every bite and sip they take throughout the day might reveal some unsettling truths about the way you truly eat. Eight overweight individuals who used to eat for more than 14 hours every day were selected to eat for a 10-11 hour period each day without any recommendation for altering their normal diet.
After 16 weeks, they had lost an average of 3.5% of their excess body weight and all reported “feeling more energetic and having slept better.”
“People have after they arise and nearly ingest provided are awake”, Panda advised The Huffington Post. It has been suggested that this eating behavior could damage one’s health. “This may also be risky for individuals with undiagnosed fasting hypoglycemia”.
The study, by researchers at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California uncovered evidence that these eating patterns are contributing to an epidemic of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. But even though Panda’s initial study is over, the MyCircadianClock app is still available for download, and research is ongoing.
Panda now hopes to test the benefits of time-restricted feeding under different conditions of sleep, activity and disease.
Two Indian-origin scientists in the U.S. have designed an app that records patterns of food intake and provides a personalised “feedogram” to help users improve their erratic eating habits and lose weight.