Dinner Plate (photo by Bert Glibbery, courtesy of morguefile.com)

Skipping meals may help you lose weight, but you’ll increase your risk of cardiovascular disease in the process. A study has found that people getting all their calories in a single meal rather than in three meals a day had significant increases in "bad" cholesterol and raised blood pressure.

Though they did lose slight amounts of weight and fat, they also saw their blood sugar rise and experienced a delayed response to the body’s insulin. Like high blood pressure, high blood sugar is a risk factor for heart problems.

The study analyses were authored by scientists at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, Md., and colleagues at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) Intramural Research Program in Baltimore, Md.

If you’d like to read an article on the topic from The Agricultural Research Service go to: Researchers Look at How Frequency of Meals May Affect Health