Response to letter to the editor: “Twice as high diet-induced thermogenesis after breakfast vs dinner on high-calorie as well as low-calorie meals”

We thank Melanson and Chen for their interest in our article (1) which gives us the opportunity to discuss the methodological peculiarities of our study.

In their first point, the authors rightly note that diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT) after lunch was probably not yet completed at the time of dinner, resulting in a higher resting metabolic rate value before dinner than before breakfast. However, following their proposal to calculate with pre-breakfast values would result in the addition of potentially remaining DIT from lunch to dinner DIT. Hence, the comparison between breakfast and dinner DIT would not have been conclusive. When designing our study, we decided to integrate lunch to avoid long periods of fasting during the...