Effect of Meal Frequency in Schoolchildren

Abstract

In three boarding schools where the daily food intake was experimentally divided between three, five and seven meals per day, respectively, 226 children of both sexes six to sixteen years of age were studied for a period of one year. Among older children (boys eleven to sixteen years and girls ten to sixteen years) in the school serving three meals per day (school A) there was a significantly greater percentage of subjects in whom the weight-height proportionality changed in favor of body weight than in the other two schools. In school A the increment of the skinfold thickness was also significantly greater compared with that found in children of similar age who ate five or seven meals per day. The difference in both parameters was more marked in girls than in boys. In the younger children (boys six to eleven years and girls six to ten years) no significant differences were found among the three schools.