Carefully scheduled diets ‘combat obesity better than fat reduction’

New research has shown that scheduling food consumption in a way that improves metabolic efficiency could be the best way of preventing obesity.

A team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has carried out research using mice which shows that a scheduled high-fat diet can offer greater benefits than an unscheduled low-fat diet with the same number of calories.

It was found that fixing dietary schedules help to regulate the body's biological clock, creating a beneficial metabolism in which ingested fats are not stored, but are instead used for energy at times when no food is available.

Professor Oren Froy, one of the key study leaders, said: "Improving metabolism through the careful scheduling of meals – without limiting the content of the daily menu – could be used as a therapeutic tool to prevent obesity in humans."

This may be a vital finding at a time when NHS figures for 2012 show that just over a quarter of all adults in England are obese.