Aaron Howard said:
Makes no difference overall. Just get your calories/macros in sometime through the day.
HUNEBED said:
does make a whole lot of difference > for example your body (liver) can take only 30 grams of protein out of your food for 1,5 - 2 hours > so if you eat a big meal with lets say 50 grams of protein, you will only adapt 30 gram and the rest you will be converted!? to glucose & fat
so 5 good meals = better/healthier than 3 big ones
Neither of these statements are true.
It is, generally speaking, most advantageous to disperse feeding times throughout the day with smaller meals. I will get into the reasoning behind this is a moment. First of all, however, something needs to be said regarding maximum protein assimilation theories. That being, there is no magic number of grams of protein that the body can handle in a given time frame. It is governed by a few factors, all of which are variable from person-to-person and time-to-time. Here are are some:
(1) Current levels of free amino acid pool population. The body carries a certain amount of amino acids in the bloodstream at any given moment. This is sometimes called a "nitrogen balance," although it could be argued that this is actually a misnomer. When the amino pool reaches undesirably low levels, it will have to pull amino acids from either stored body tissue or food. At times of low amino pool levels (e.g. post-workout, post-fasting), the body's ability to digest and assimilate a greater amount of protein is heightened.
(2) Available protease and pepsin play roles in how readily a protein can be uptaken into the body. Insufficient free enzyme levels will result in poor digestion. This is a minor limiting factor, however, unless a tremendous amount of easily digested protein is consumed in one sitting.
(3) The type of protein, contents of the stomach, and other things consumed along with the protein will all factor into how rapidly the protein is digested. A protein that populates the amino acid pool very rapidly (e.g. whey hydrolysate), taken on an empty stomach, with nothing else but high-gly carbs to facilitate an insulin response, will be best suited for rapid amino pool population applications. This would be basically PWO or upon waking in the morning. A slow-digesting protein (e.g. micellar casein), taken with lots of fat and fiber not too long after a prior meal would take a very long time to dump amino acids into the bloodstream. We could be talking about anywhere from 6-12 hours. It would clearly be conceivable that consuming 90g of protein in the first scenario would lead to much more amino "wasting" than the second.
So, why should I spread meals throughout the day rather than gorging myself two or three times? There are a few reasons, but let me just mention the ones that are probably most important to you:
(1) Spreading your feedings throughout the day (meaning meal portions are more frequent and smaller) will cause less of an insulin/glucose flux. Blood sugar, amino levels, free/bound lipids are constantly in flux, which is not necessarily a good thing for the athlete. The body does the best job possible to minimize blood sugar imbalances by secretion of insulin and glucagon. However, feeding the body large amounts of kCal (specifically high-GI, high-II carbs) in a single sitting forces much more strain on the endocrine system. Minimizing peaks and troughs in blood sugar will benefit energy levels, pancreatic function, body composition, and even tooth health (yes, high blood sugar has been shown to play a role in tooth decay).
(2) Eating more frequently minimizes lipogenesis, and in caloric-deficient diets, it helps in inducing lipolysis. A lot of this feeds off of the previous point of minimizing blood glucose flux. However, there are some unidentified enzymes that seem to actually recognize meal frequency and assist the body in adipose storage when feedings become infrequent. This is survival mechanism which we don't really need anymore, but it takes the evolutionary process a
long time to turn off unneeded genes.
I guess that is enough info for now, although it is a bit of a skeleton outline of how food works in the body. If anyone has any targeted questions, feel free to ask.