Scientific Research on Meal Timing on Metabolism and Health

Food is something we cannot do without and it is something that we cannot do about. You remember Oliver Twist and requesting for more? That was food, You watched the movie Ratatouille? Well that rat was able to cook and what he cooked was food. You see, we cannot do without food, and we schedule our lives around it. Yes, that lunch break you usually have when you are at work, it's a chance for you to eat.

When it comes to food, a lot of people have discussed about the quality of food, and the quantity of food, but in this post, I think it is important that we go beyond that since most of us know what quality of food or the quantity we should it, what I will be discussing is the time we should actually eat.

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Before you start with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, be calm and read on. Nearly all living organism has a circadian rhythm that can be found in the molecular, physiological, and behavioral level. This rhythm affects the digestive system, the cardiovascular system, the immune system, and even the reproductive system. This daily rhythm is important as it is able to separate incompatible biochemical and al or physiological processes such as light dark cycles, and optimizing energy expenditure as well as preventing the buildup of toxic intermediates.

This was good as in the past when we were not close to modernization but in recent times, a lot of people have exposure to artificial lighting, and access to food almost 24/7, and with this, a lot of people have had circadian dissonance where they are out of sync with the circadian consonance. With this, is there an optimum time to eat?

You must have heard of restricted feeding and with this, there is a restricted time window to a specific time of about 9 to 12 hours. In a research done by Satchin Panda, he limited food intake to a specific time window of 9 to 12 hours with Isocaloric time restricted feeding studies in rodents showed improvements in several metabolic parameters such as glucose and insulin homeostasis, liver pathology, energy expenditure, and resistance to food that could cause obesity.

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There is a meta analysis titled "Association between skipping breakfast and risk of Cardiovascular Disease and all Cause Mortality" and it associated breakfast skipping and risk of cardiovascular diseases, cancer and mortality but then, this meta analysis looked at numerous confounding variables but then there are other researches that discusses about time of feeding. One of them is the article titled "Late Isocaloric eating increases hunger, decreases energy expenditure, and modifies metabolic pathway in adults with overweight and obesity" which discusses the direct effect meal timing, and didn't add other variables when researching. The article showed that the researchers controlled the timing, amount, and the type of food that was eaten. Obese Participants were divided into protocols where some were required to either ate too early, or too late.

The article looked at the effect of late eating and its association with leptin which promotes satiety (when we are satisfied), and Ghrelin (hormone associated with hunger). The result showed that late eating decreased leptin level by 6%, and increased ghrelin to leptin ratio by 12%. The result showed that eating late will increase hunger.

Another article looked at the timing of daily calorie loading and its effect on appetite and hunger without changes in energy metabolism in healthy subjects with obesity. The article was studying 30 obese adults and were looking at hunger and energy metabolism. The 30 subjects underwent two 4-week calorie-restricted cross over trial where they have a morning loaded diet and an evening loaded diet and the calorie intake were fixed and a controlled experiment. The result showed that morning load energy intake resulted in lower daily subjective appetite and hunger and this was similar to the first study.

As we delve into the nuances of when we eat, recognizing the significance of aligning our meals with our natural circadian rhythm emerges as a key consideration for holistic well-being.

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Reference

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https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2016.150
https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28662-5