How many meals per day are most effective for keeping your blood gluco

Elevated blood glucose levels cause tissue damage and increase inflammation.

You don’t have to have diabetes to see the damaging effects of high blood glucose levels after a meal. Your body may be able to maintain fasting blood glucose within a normal range for a while even if you eat meals that will raise your blood glucose too high after you eat. Eating meals like that are however causing damage.

Eating high glycemic index meals especially large meals will gradually make you less insulin sensitive and with time also increase fasting blood glucose.

The following research was a randomized crossover study with overweight participant who had impaired glucose tolerance ( Papakonstantinou E, et al., 2018).

The researchers compared 2 types of meal patterns over 12 weeks. The participants consumed equally composed meals but they had either 3 or 6 meals per day. The calorie intake per day was the same.

The results showed that 6 meals per day instead of 3 meals per day increased glycemic control.

The composition of a meal will also make a big difference, but that was not investigated in this study.

Reference:

E Papakonstantinou, M D Kontogianni, P Mitrou, E Magriplis, D Vassiliadi, T Nomikos, V Lambadiari, E Georgousopoulou, G Dimitriadis, Effects of 6 vs 3 eucaloric meal patterns on glycaemic control and satiety in people with impaired glucose tolerance or overt type 2 diabetes: A randomized trial, Diabetes Metab. 2018 Jun;44(3):226-234.