“Among participant with three meals per day, a meal interval of ≤4.5 hours in two adjacent meals was associated with higher all-cause mortality.” So people who ate three meals a day ALSO fared poorly? Am I reading that right?
In addition, we need to know what percentage of the people were doing fasting, in order to determine if the HRs are statistically significant. That claim a 95% confidence ratio, but is that true?
If we're not able to do this kind of simple checkup on the data, we will just confuse us even more when we find another paper that adds even more naunce and complexity to the issue. That's how people become anti-science. Because we don't understand /this/ work, this work causes us cognitive dissonance. And because we don't understand this work, our dissonance is even worse next time.
I hope a kind statistician comes along and help our thread about by explaining the numbers and what they really mean in terms of death risk and life expectancy.
It's not saying anything about 3 meals vs. any other number of meals.
The lowest hazard rate/lowest all-cause mortality was among those who ate 3 meals a day and had 4.5+ hours between them.