Should We Be Eating Three Meals a Day?
The idea that we should eat three meals a day is surprisingly modern. How many meals a day is best for our health? It’s likely you eat three meals a day – modern life is designed around this way of eating. We’re told breakfast is the most important meal of the day, we’re given lunch breaks at work, and then our social and family lives revolve around evening meals. But is this the healthiest way to eat? Before considering how frequently we should eat, scientists urge us to consider when we shouldn’t.
Intermittent fasting, where you restrict your food intake to an eight-hour window, is becoming a huge area of research. Giving our bodies at least 12 hours a day without food allows our digestive system to rest, says Emily Manoogian, a clinical researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, and author of a 2019 paper entitled “When to eat”.
Excerpted from Joy Online
