Intermittent fasting – the practice of restricting eating to certain hours of the day or certain days of the week – is promoted across social media and embraced by millions of Americans. But a Cochrane systematic review of the clinical evidence finds it produces nearly identical weight loss, quality of life and adverse events as conventional diets like calorie-counting.
“The differences we found between the diets were statistically indistinguishable from zero,” said Diane Rigassio Radler, a professor of clinical nutrition at the Rutgers School of Health Professions and a co-author of the review. Cochrane reviews are widely considered the gold standard for evaluating medical evidence. These independent, evidence-based health care studies follow strict protocols registered in advance and employ rigorous methods for searching, selecting and analyzing clinical trials.
This review of 22 randomized controlled trials with a combined 1,995 participants examined several forms of intermittent fasting: time-restricted eating (limiting meals to an eight- or 10-hour window), alternate-day fasting and the “5:2” approach of eating normally five days a week and drastically cutting calories on two. It compared these fasting techniques with both standard dietary advice and no intervention. To read the full story.