The Relation Between Meal Frequency and Obesity in Adults

Abstract

Obesity is one of the most common nutritional disorders. Some studies suggest that obesity may be related to eating patterns, such as meal frequency, temporal distribution of eating events during the day, meal skipping and the frequency of out of meals. Therefore, in this cross-sectional study was investigated the relationships between meal frequency, anthropometric measurements, energy-macro/micronutrient intakes and meal skipping frequency for 1829 volunteer (520 men, 1309 women) adults aged between 40 and 64 years old, from Ankara, Turkey. The median meal frequency of women and men were 4 and 3, respectively. Approximately 57% of men and 61% of women have skipped meals and 76.8% of them were skipped their lunch. The meal frequency positively correlated with waist/ hip ratio in women (p<0.05). Additionally, there were positively significant correlations between meal frequency and saturated fatty acids, fiber, vitamin A, tiamine, riboflavin, folate, vitamin B6, vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, iron and copper intake (p<0.05). As a conclusion, the data indicate that increased meal frequency may have a beneficial effect on micronutrients intakes and some anthropometric measurements among adults.