[b said:Quote[/b] ]1. Research into meal frequency does not support a substantial difference in terms of weight loss (or anything else) for varying frequency as long as calories are the same. The occasinoal negative result is usually from studies comparing extremes (i.e. 2 to 6+ meals) which means going extended periods without protein in the 2 meal/day group. I doubt a 3 vs. 6 meal frequency with identical macro/caloric intake would show an iota of difference. People forget that it takes many hours for a meal to be completely utilized and the bigger the meal, the longer it takes. 3 large meals vs 6 small meals at the identical daily calorie level balance over 24 hours.
There was a good review in Br J Nutrition on this a few years back.
Btw, I have never seen an iota of data suggesting htere is any meal limit on protein intake. The gut/our bodies are smarter than that, longer protein meals just sit in the stomach longer (the presence of nutrients in the intestine causes gastric emptying to slow via something called teh ileal brake mechanism), and will be released over a longer time frame.
2. You need to pick up the protein symposium from Journal Of nutrition (vol 132: 2002). They deal with the issue of latency of amino acid stimulation and most of the other topics you discussed in this post. One thing to note is that the study you referenced was a constant infusion study achieving steady state AA levels; this is non physiological. So while it does appear that a constant supply of amino acids would cause problems, it shouldn't happen under normal meal feeding conditions (where the gut and liver are controlling how much protein gets released into the system).
Even with meals spaced 3 hours apart, there will be an initial surge of aminos into the free pool followed by a drop. Interestingly, they note research comparing leucine balance for 3 meals/day vs hourly meals (same leucine content) with the 3 meals/day showing better net leucine balance. it was actually 2 studies they did but they compared the data to look at mechanisms. But hourly meals are equally non-physiologic except for insane bodybuilders. It may very well be that eating far too frequently is a bad thing (then again, higher meal frequency generally means smaller meals so it may all balance out) but eating too infrequently is probably just as bad.
3. The protein pulse feeding was shown to be superior in elderly folks but was inferior in younger individuals (compared to standard feeding) so don't draw too many conclusions from that. there appears to be differences in protein metabolism between young and old folks (and, of course, neither study included exercise).
I got this from Lyle's forum. Comments? I always thought that I HAVE TO eat 6 meals to grow.
Please state the comments in the context of hypocaloric and hypercaloric situations.