The impact of late-night eating on weight and health

According to recent research, eating late in the evening and eating at night can have a negative impact on our health, such as causing blood sugar spikes.

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Whether one engages in dinner late at night or midnight snacking, it’s hard to get around doing so periodically. However, a new study suggests this may not be a problem-free behavior after all.

The study

The researchers behind this study looked specifically at three levers related to weight control and obesity risk-appetite, energy expenditure (calories burned), and molecular changes in fat tissue.

To do so, they recruited 16 overweight or obese individuals and had them follow two meal schedules: one was an “early meal schedule,” and the second was identical to the first, only all meals were four hours later (e.g., dinner in the early schedule was at 5:00 PM, whereas dinner in the late schedule was at 9:00 PM).

Over the course of both eating schedules, the subjects’ perceptions of hunger were measured, as were blood draws and body temperature and energy expenditure. Some volunteers also gave fat tissue.

The researchers also controlled for factors such as the timing of sleep and the composition of meals to exclude any potential interfering factors in their experiment.

Key findings

Late-night eating could be linked to a greater risk of obesity, particularly in individuals who are already overweight or obese.

Indeed, results showed that individuals on the latter meal schedule retired to bed hungrier and burned fewer calories while exhibiting fat tissue changes indicative of increased fat storage.

“We found that eating four hours later makes a significant difference in our hunger levels, the way we burn calories after meals, and the way we store fat,” said researchers.

Limitations and broader implications

Since the research participants included only overweight or obese people, the authors said more studies needed to be done to see if those results would generalize to other people.

That being said, it’s already well-documented that eating late at night disrupts sleep and causes blood sugar spikes-so it’s worth avoiding when possible.

Source: Cell Metabolism