American Heart Association statment on meal timing and heart disease

JeromeBarry1

Not so daft after all?

http://newsroom.heart.org/news/meal-planning-timing-may-impact-heart-health

lokihen

There isn't a single declarative sentence in that link. "May" and "appears to" even in the animal studies they have done haven't proved anything.

NorthCascades

Keep in mind that heart health and waist size are different things. When people say "meal timing doesn't affect weight loss" that doesn't mean meal timing doesn't affect other things. It just means people here are focused on weight loss. Since the forum's name is "General diet and weight loss help" that makes sense.

TimothyFish

I think you will find that athletes tend to pay much more attention to meal timing than what people who are just trying to lose weight do. The big difference is that athletes view food as fuel while people who are trying to lose weight tend to view food as a reward. Given that the body functions differently based on what fuel is available at various times, I think it is likely that subsequent research will show that meal timing plays a part in heart health.

Need2Exerc1se

I think the first paragraph (below) tells us how to interpret the article. That and the statement just above that says research is needed.

Planning when to eat meals and snacks and not skipping breakfast, are patterns associated with healthier diets, which could reduce cardiovascular disease risk, according to a new scientific statement published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

prattiger65

Quote
"•Planning and timing meals and snacks, such as not skipping breakfast and allocating more calories earlier in the day, might help reduce cardiovascular disease risk.
•Large studies tracking patients’ cardiovascular health over a long period are needed to show how meal timing and patterns impact disease risk."
I didn't read past that.

cwolfman13

I don't know that it's the meal timing in and of itself...I'd think people who plan their meals and exhibit these other patterns are more likely to have other healthy habits as well...ie quality nutrition, regular exercise, etc.

janejellyroll

I read "pattern associated with a healthier diet" as anything that helps someone maintain that diet -- it isn't necessarily a component of the diet itself. For many of us, eating breakfast helps us control our appetite throughout the day and prevents eating more for lunch than we otherwise would. For those of us in that group, breakfast is important. For those who don't see that benefit from breakfast and prefer to skip it? That could just be their pattern for maintaining a healthier diet.

Lounmoun

I interpreted it as saying it is something they want to study to see if meal timing impacts people's food choices. Food choices and weight gain are what is impacting heart health.
It doesn't seem like they are saying a person who eats a nutritious diet and maintains a healthy weight will see a huge risk to their heart health if they eat later in the day.

TimothyFish

Lounmoun wrote: »

I interpreted it as saying it is something they want to study to see if meal timing impacts people's food choices. Food choices and weight gain are what is impacting heart health.
It doesn't seem like they are saying a person who eats a nutritious diet and maintains a healthy weight will see a huge risk to their heart health if they eat later in the day.

Could be, but there is a number of people who are "skinny fat." I'm sure the AHA is interested in figuring out what leads to that. Lack of exercise may be one thing, but they may be looking for other possibilities as well.

AnnPT77

Skipping meals is bad, but occasional fasting is good. Mmm - hmmm, sure.

Sorry, that's just snark about the press release. I agree with @lokihen, the press release has lots of hedged remarks based on animal studies.

But I read the actual PDF of the full scientific statement (linked in the quasi-footnotes of the press release), which is basically a survey of a whole bunch of human studies. It was interesting but simultaneously quite dull, if you know what I mean.

The bottom line conclusion, paraphrasing wildly, seems to be less that any particular eating schedule is magical, but more that planning your eating in some structured way is better than crazily grazing and grabbing whatever happens to be on hand and easy at the moment. That's a big surprise (heh).

There are some interesting bits, IMO, related to potential for developing diabetes, as well as for people who have insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome (though even these have some puzzling variations across studies), and maybe for lipid profile problems.

It's also important to note what populations were intentionally excluded from the survey (studies involving very active people, for instance).

But none of this seems to be an across the board ringing endorsement for (say) intermittent fasting, or even breakfast-eating, at least to my way of reading it (which was more a once-through than a careful comb-through, I admit). Those who are looking for evidence to support their favorite WOE will certainly disagree with me, regardless.

ninerbuff

When it states there is "no evidence" in the article, then it's basically going to be how a person views it. Myself, unless there's actually evidence, I view it as correlation. Not that it's a bad thing, but it's not necessary to time one's meals to be successful. There are just too many successes I've personally witnessed that do not adhere to meal timing.

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AnvilHead

cwolfman13 wrote: »

I don't know that it's the meal timing in and of itself...I'd think people who plan their meals and exhibit these other patterns are more likely to have other healthy habits as well...ie quality nutrition, regular exercise, etc.

In other words, the AHA has difficulty distinguishing between correlation and causation.

Here's one along the same lines which makes just as much sense: "We see a lot of fat people exercising. Therefore, exercise makes people fat."

Afura

AHA needs clickbait titles for advertising revenue? Going with potentially daft as this provided no concrete results. I also hate articles that say "could" and don't quantify.

AnnPT77

Is anyone actually reading the scientific statement, not just the press release about the scientific statement? circ.ahajournals.org/content/circulationaha/early/2017/01/30/CIR.0000000000000476.full.pdf

Yeah, it's a kinda turgid multi-page pedantic-sounding document. But it's much meatier than the press release. (Big surprise, eh?)

rileysowner

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Is anyone actually reading the scientific statement, not just the press release about the scientific statement? circ.ahajournals.org/content/circulationaha/early/2017/01/30/CIR.0000000000000476.full.pdf

Yeah, it's a kinda turgid multi-page pedantic-sounding document. But it's much meatier than the press release. (Big surprise, eh?)

I started to read. Then started to skim. After running into extensive "associated with" statements, I realized that much of what is there is correlation studies. Yes, they can give some direction for further study, but to read the whole thing I will have to print it off. I probably will eventually. It looks like the basic take away is planned eating, whatever the pattern, is better than unplanned.

AnnPT77

rileysowner wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Is anyone actually reading the scientific statement, not just the press release about the scientific statement? circ.ahajournals.org/content/circulationaha/early/2017/01/30/CIR.0000000000000476.full.pdf

Yeah, it's a kinda turgid multi-page pedantic-sounding document. But it's much meatier than the press release. (Big surprise, eh?)

I started to read. Then started to skim. After running into extensive "associated with" statements, I realized that much of what is there is correlation studies. Yes, they can give some direction for further study, but to read the whole thing I will have to print it off. I probably will eventually. It looks like the basic take away is planned eating, whatever the pattern, is better than unplanned.

Yes. And some small more tightly-controlled ones.

I didn't see anything earth-shattering on a first read - it's basically a lit survey/summarization thing, not a new study, after all - but the criteria for studies' inclusion weren't idiotic, and there are some interesting bits.

Mainly, my point was that a lot of the dismissive commentary in this thread about the statement and the AHA is not (IMO) based on the actual scientific statement, but the much lamer press release.

As you saw in my previous post, I drew basically the same high-level conclusion as you did: Unsurprisingly, intentional eating is better than mindless grab'n'go. If I were IR, I might've focused more on those parts, though. If I still had a bad lipid profile, ditto.