You may love a cheat meal but your waistline won’t — if you make a habit of it, that is. Find out how much leeway your diet has for “less than healthy” food.

Is It Okay to Eat That Cheat Meal?

Eating a cheat meal may not hurt your metabolism in the short-term but don’t make a habit of it.  

Diagnosis Life summary:
You deserve it, or so you tell yourself. You reward yourself with a cheat meal. The question is whether that cheat meal is going to wreak havoc on your metabolism. A study in the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism (https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpendo.00500.2018) aimed to find out. Researchers looked at healthy men in their 20s who had a normal weight. They had them overeat for 5 days or for 28 days. They monitored their glucose levels, insulin response, and body fat. As it turned out, having a cheat meal in the short-term caused mild increases in visceral body fat (fat around the organs). Long-term overeating, on the other hand, caused participants to actually gain weight. They also had spikes in both glucose and insulin, increasing their risk for prediabetes and diabetes. While it’s okay to indulge every now and then, don’t overdo it. Be mindful of what you eat.

Eating out too much increases your mortality risk.

Diagnosis Life summary:
Eating out is great. It can be convenient, delicious, and fun. For the most part, it is also less healthy than the food you make at home. That’s before you even think about the supersized portion sizes. A study in Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2021.01.012) looked at the dining habits of more than 35,000 adults. Results were based on one to six years of follow-up. Over that time, 511 people died from heart disease and 638 from cancer. People who ate out 2 or more times per day had an 18% higher risk for cardiac mortality and a 67% higher risk for cancer mortality than people who ate out less than once per week (on average). This study does not prove a cause and effect relationship. Still, it is reasonable to think that what you eat over time will catch up with you. Make healthy choices when you can.

Processed foods increase calorie intake.

Diagnosis Life summary:
You know what they say about potato chips — you can’t eat just one. A study in Cell Metabolism (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008) looked to see if people would eat just as many calories of healthy foods. Nope! Twenty people were placed on one of two diets, one with processed foods and the other without. They tried each diet for 2 weeks. Keep in mind each diet offered the same number of calories, up to twice what they needed to maintain their weight, but the participant decided how much they wanted to eat. The researchers found that the people eating processed foods ate 508 more calories per day and gained 0.9 kg (nearly 2 lb.) during their time on that diet! This could be because those foods had more added sugars and fats while unprocessed foods tended to have more insoluble fiber which made people feel full.

Ultra-processed foods increase the risk of diabetes.

Diagnosis Life summary:
How much ultra-processed food do you eat? There is actually a classification of food, the NOVA classification, that divides the food we eat into four categories. Unfortunately, a lot of what we eat as Americans falls into that highly processed category. A study in JAMA Internal Medicine (https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.5942) looked at the dietary habits of more than 100,000 French adults and found that people who consumed a diet high in ultra-processed foods increased their risk for developing diabetes over 6 years. The researchers reported that “every 10% increase in the amount of ‘ultra-processed’ food translated into a 15% increase in the risk for developing diabetes.” Cutting back on processed foods and eating more fruits and vegetables when you can will change your health for the better.