Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast

episodes to help you improve your health. Today we're discussing how snacking impacts your health.

You've probably heard conflicting advice on how often to eat.

I know I have.

And if you ever wondered about the evidence behind eating three meals a day, could two or five meals actually be healthier?

Professors Tim Specter and Sarah Berry join me to share some unexpected insights and practical advice to help you base your snacking habits in the latest science.

What's really interesting is that over the last 10 years or so there's been lots of

randomized control trials now that have been looking at how people behave in terms of their health depending on whether they have three meals a day

or whether they have six or even up to nine eating events a day.

And all of this data seems to show that as long as people are snacking on healthy foods, there

doesn't seem to be any difference in either weight or what we call cardiometabolic health

outcomes, so factors related to cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes and there seems to be no difference depending on whether you're eating three meals or having six or even up to nine eating events a day.

That's if they're eating healthy meals which 90% of you don't.

Okay, so that's why we needed to break it down into the three areas.

So firstly, is eating multiple times hurt the day bad for us us and I think the evidence shows if it's on healthy food

then it's not unfavourable and our Zowie predict research really clearly shows this as well

that for people that are eating on healthy snacks,

rather than snacking on unhealthy food, that there's no unfavourable effect on any of these outcomes.

Can you caveat that with breakfast though? You know my views on skipping breakfast and the

meta analysis that shows that the breakfast might be the exception so I think what

we're talking about is during the day, you know, between say

lunch and dinner if you have snacks and they're healthy, there's no evidence

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