When it comes to eating, much of the focus over the last few decades has been on what our choices are. From dieticians to psychologists, we’re told that what we eat plays a major role in our physical and mental well-being.
As we age, changes to our health and everyday routines influence when we eat our meals. With a major emphasis placed on the what, the when has been largely ignored.
Now healthcare professionals are starting to explore the importance of when we eat for better metabolism and heart health, as well as for maintaining energy levels and regulating mood.
Timing is everything
A decades-long study led by an American research team showed that older adults have a tendency to eat breakfast and dinner later in the day. This results in higher risk of depression, fatigue, poor sleep and premature death. The findings were published in the journal ‘Communications Medicine’(opens in new window).
“The timing of breakfast could serve as an easy-to-monitor marker of their overall health status,” lead author Hassan Dashti, nutrition scientist and circadian biologist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, told ‘The Independent’(opens in new window).
The researchers set out to understand how meal timing shifts as people get older and how it’s linked to health and longevity. They analysed data from nearly 3 000 adults aged 42 to 94 in the United Kingdom who were tracked between 1983 and 2017. The volunteers reported the times they ate meals, and completed health and lifestyle surveys over the course of several years.
The average breakfast, lunch and dinner times were 8:22 a.m. 12:38 p.m. and 5:51 p.m. respectively. The participants ate breakfast 31 minutes after waking up and dinner about 5 ½ hours before going to bed.
Overall, the older people got, the later they ate. The study stressed how important it is to maintain a regular meal schedule, particularly for breakfast timing. Keeping to a consistent breakfast time may make us live longer.
“Patients and clinicians can possibly use shifts in mealtime routines as an early warning sign to look into underlying physical and mental health issues,” explained Dashti in a news release(opens in new window).
Eat earlier or die sooner
“Up until now, we had a limited insight into how the timing of meals evolves later in life and how this shift relates to overall health and longevity,” commented Dashti. “Our findings help fill that gap by showing that later meal timing, especially delayed breakfast, is tied to both health challenges and increased mortality risk in older adults. These results add new meaning to the saying that ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’, especially for older individuals.”
The study findings show that encouraging older adults to maintain consistent meal schedules on a daily basis, especially for breakfast, could become part of a broader strategy to promote healthy ageing and longevity.