Why Did Mice Get Fat Eating the Same Food?

On the show, limiting calories to four, six, eight, or even ten hours of every 24-hour cycle, kept more or less with the light and with when the sun is out, leads to less liver disease, improved metabolic markers, and less body fat. Peer-reviewed papers in journals like Cell report the result.

In the mouse studies, the animals could eat whatever they wanted, and as much as they wanted, inside a limited period of the 24-hour cycle. They did great. They maintained a healthy weight or even lost weight. The same amount of food stretched across the entire 24-hour cycle, with eating every hour or two hours, left the animals fat and sick.

How much of the mouse data translates to humans is not clear. What is really clear with humans is adherence. What people will do in a laboratory is often hard to do in the real world.