Meal Pattern Analysis in Nutritional Science: Recent Methods and Findings

There is a scarcity of dietary intake research focusing on the intake of whole meals rather than on the nutrients and foods of which those meals are composed. This growing area of research has recently begun to utilize advanced statistical techniques to manage the large number of variables and permutations associated with these complex meal patterns. The aim of this narrative review was to evaluate those techniques and the meal patterns they detect. The 10 observational studies identified used techniques such as principal components analysis, clustering, latent class analysis, and decision trees. They examined meal patterns under 3 categories: temporal patterns (relating to the timing and distribution of meals), content patterns (relating to combinations of foods within a meal and combinations of those meals over a day), and context patterns (relating to external elements of the meal, such as location, activities while eating, and the presence or absence of others). The most common temporal meal patterns were the 3 meals/d pattern, the skipped breakfast pattern, and a grazing pattern consisting of smaller but more frequent meals. The 3 meals/d pattern was associated with increased diet quality compared with the other 2 patterns. Studies identified between 7 and 12 content patterns with limited similarities between studies and no clear associations between the patterns and diet quality or health. One study simultaneously examined temporal and context meal patterns, finding limited associations with diet quality. No study simultaneously examined other combinations of meal patterns. Future research that further develops the statistical techniques required for meal pattern analysis is necessary to clarify the relations between meal patterns and diet quality and health.