I was listening yesterday to a radio interview with the author of a book on food cravings. She stated categorically that, after eating, insulin is produced which stops fat-burning for 3 hours. She repeated this ‘fact’ several times, and from this had drawn various conclusions about what and how we should eat.
One of the conclusions was that we should only eat three times a day – if we ate, more frequently, then the insulin would stop our body burning fat. This information flies in the face of much research that suggests that eating frequent smaller meals containing some protein is the best way to reduce cravings and give satisfactory long-term weight loss.
This does not mean it is wrong – even scientific ‘facts’ do get regularly overturned, but this does not make sense on a lot of different levels. It is a very simple model of the body – hormones such as insulin interact with each other – and anyway there are huge differences between individuals.
Anyway is the body really that precise? She didn't say ‘about 3 hours’. What happens if the person does something that demands a lot of calories in those three hours?
I think this was real nonsense and felt sad that BBC Radio 2 had given air-time to the promotion of a book with half-baked theories in it like this.
