Experts say skipping meals and fasting could be healthier than eating three full meals a day

Eating three square meals a day - breakfast, lunch and dinner - is not necessarily helping our health, according to various studies by experts. In a recent report by the Mother Jones website, it is said that there are no actual evidence that support the practice of completing the three main meals a day in order to achieve and maintain good health. Rather, it is argued that skipping meals, as well as fasting, could actually yield a better result, forcing the body to run in 'survival mode' and break down excesses.

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MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - Longevity expert, Valter Longo of the University of Southern California said that starving makes the body try to save energy, and one way is to recycle excess immune cells which are not needed and/or damaged.

Having the body run in survival mode for two to four days every six months forces the system to use stored up fat and sugar, eventually breaking down old cells.

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Consequently, U.S. researchers claimed that fasting for two or more days helps alert the immune system by replacing old and damaged cells, especially those deteriorated by aging and cancer.

In the University of Bath, a study last year found out that eating breakfast has no effect on the overall daily calories a person intakes; this was supported by more research from the University of Alabama, which concluded that it has no effects on trying to lose weight.

A study published in a 2010 edition of the British Journal of Nutrition shows eating three full meals a day is the same as eating six small meals.

The practice of rigidly eating breakfast, lunch and dinner is only a cultural construction imposed by the Europeans to the Native Americans, according to historian Abigail Carroll. This cultural construction is then intensified as healthy by promotional campaigns of breakfast producers.

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