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Most breakfast advice is about what belongs on the plate. A large study of U.S. adults suggests the clock deserves attention too: when you take in your first and last calories of the day may be tied to how long you live.<\/p>\nMost breakfast advice is about what belongs on the plate. A large study of U.S. adults suggests the clock deserves attention too: when you take in your first and last calories of the day may be tied to how long you live.<\/p>\n
The findings show an association, not proof that changing meal times changes anyone’s fate. They do add to evidence that health can depend not only on what we eat, but also on when we eat it.<\/p>\n
Earlier research has linked skipping breakfast and eating late at night with poorer health, but the risks attached to specific clock times were still unclear.<\/p>\n
Researchers therefore analyzed data from 31,044 adults aged 40 and older from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, covering 1999 to 2018.<\/p>\n
Participants reported everything they had eaten or drunk in the previous 24 hours, including the time of each food or drink.<\/p>\n
The study, published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition<\/em>, treated any calorie-containing food or drink consumed after 4 a.m. as the “first meal,” which means it was not necessarily a classic sit-down breakfast.<\/p>\n The last calorie intake became the last meal, and the gap between the two became the eating window.<\/p>\n The team then matched these records with deaths registered through the end of 2019.<\/p>\n During a median follow-up of 8.6 years, 7,129 participants died, including 2,259 from cardiovascular causes.<\/p>\n The analysis accounted for factors such as age, smoking, physical activity, diet quality, body mass index, energy intake, income, and pre-existing illness.<\/p>\n A pattern emerged as the first meal was eaten later.<\/p>\n Compared with a meal between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m., a first meal between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. was associated with a 10% higher risk of death from any cause. The gap rose to 19% between 10 a.m. and noon, and to 29% after 12 p.m.<\/p>\n Cardiovascular mortality followed a similar path.<\/p>\n Eating for the first time after noon was associated with a 46% higher risk of cardiovascular death compared with a first meal between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. At age 50, the latest group also had an estimated life expectancy 2.46 years shorter on average.<\/p>\n The last meal of the day produced a more surprising result.<\/p>\n Instead of risk simply rising with each later hour, the relationship had a U shape. Compared with a last meal between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., eating before 7 p.m. was associated with a 13% higher risk of death from any cause, while eating after midnight was associated with a 27% higher risk. The lowest modeled risk sat around 8 p.m.<\/p>\n “That does not mean, however, that 7-8 p.m. is a universally optimal dinner time for everyone,” lead author Zhilei Shan of Huazhong University of Science and Technology told ScienceAlert.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Eating very late can disrupt circadian rhythms and metabolism, Shan explained. A very early last meal, though, could reflect work schedules, illness, or lower energy intake.<\/p>\n People who ate early tended to be older, eat less often, and have more pre-existing conditions, so the clock may reveal something about their health rather than cause it.<\/p>\n The eating window added another complication.<\/p>\n Once the timing of the first meal was taken into account, its duration showed no consistent relationship with mortality across the full sample. Its association instead varied depending on when eating began.<\/p>\n That adds a nuance to concerns about very short eating windows: counting fasting hours alone can miss part of the picture.<\/p>\n “Meal timing is an important signal for peripheral circadian rhythms,” Shan said. “A later first meal or eating late at night can contribute to circadian misalignment and metabolic disruption, including impaired lipid and glucose metabolism.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Animal studies point to possible pathways involving weight gain, fat buildup in the liver, disrupted clocks in organs other than the brain, and altered fat absorption. It is still unclear whether those mechanisms explain the mortality patterns in humans.<\/p>\n Reverse causation is also possible. Eating late may be a consequence or a marker of poor health, poor sleep, shift work, or socioeconomic circumstances. A previous study in older adults similarly found that breakfast shifted later as health problems accumulated.<\/p>\n “Therefore, later eating should be interpreted as a potential risk marker, and possibly a modifiable behavior, rather than as definitive proof of a direct causal effect,” Shan said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The main limits of the study come from its observational design. Meal timing was mostly captured by a single 24-hour recall at the start, which may not represent years of eating habits.<\/p>\n Chronotype, detailed sleep patterns, the timing of activity, and other unmeasured factors could still influence the results, despite extensive adjustments and sensitivity analyses.<\/p>\n “On the basis of these results alone, people should not make extreme changes to their meal times,” Shan said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n