Looking to gauge your physical and mental health? Simply look into your porridge bowl, more specifically what time you’re consuming your first meal, according to a recent study from the USA.
“We showed that later meal timing, especially delayed breakfast, is tied to both health challenges and increased mortality risk in older adults,” explained lead author Hassan Dashti, a nutrition specialist and circadian biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. “These results add new meaning to the saying that ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ – especially for older individuals.”
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Dashti and his team dug deep into the data of 2,945 adults in the UK aged between 42 and 94 years old. They discovered that as the years roll by, so do early mornings, with older adults eating breakfast and dinner at later times than when they were young. That’s perhaps not surprising when you retire.
What is surprising is that later breakfast time was consistently linked to common physical and mental health conditions like depression, fatigue and myriad oral health issues. Worse, tucking into the most important meal of the day when it’s more brunch time than breakfast time heightened the risk of death.
This supports previous research that revealed eating later is associated with metabolic changes that ultimately results in a higher body mass index and piling on the fat. One reason why is down to melatonin, aka the sleep hormone. As the day winds its way to nighttime, melatonin levels rise, resulting in a sleepy, drowsy you. That’s good as sleep is when your body rest, recuperates, repairs and rebuilds from the day’s activities. The downside for those eating late is that melatonin also impairs the body’s ability to process sugars like glucose, leading to weight gain.
Work with your system, not against
“The role of eating schedules is biologically relevant as dietary intake acts as an environmental cue influencing the circadian clocks of peripheral metabolic tissues,” say the researchers. “Therefore, it can contribute to circadian misalignment and internal desynchrony.” In other words, your system becomes imbalanced when you eat later.
What can you take away from this? Firstly, it’s not great news if you’re more of an owl than a lark, as your eating patterns are naturally later, albeit the health issues appeared to sync with age-related changes rather than ones ingrained throughout life.
The authors did note that this is something to be aware of if you’re a fan of intermittent fasting, as the health of impact of shifting mealtimes could cause issues in ageing populations.
“Ultimately, our research suggests that changes in when older adults eat, especially the timing of breakfast, could serve as an easy-to-monitor marker of a person’s overall health status,” said Dashti. “Encouraging older adults in having consistent meal schedules could become part of broader strategies to promoting healthy aging and longevity.”
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