Does a low calorie meal pay off Some dieters say that eating less at just one meal is ineffective because people compensate by eating more at other meals but a new study contradicts that argument Below is an excerpt from a NY Times article on this study For two weeks researchers had 17 men and women eat all their meals and snacks as much as they wanted at a buffet where the exact quantities consumed could be weighed and caloric intake calculated Then for the next two weeks the participants ate a 200 calorie lunch a commercially available food like a Kashi bar or a Lean Pocket But the rest of the day they ate whatever they wanted from the buffet Not counting lunch the participants consumed 1 568 calories on days they had the 200 calorie lunch and 1 560 on days when they did not an insignificant difference But over all they consumed 245 fewer calories on low calorie lunch days The result of that unsurprisingly was weight loss an average of 1 1 pounds per participant in two weeks What type of study is this O Observational study Experiment