London - For years those seeking a healthier lifestyle have lived by the mantra: ‘You are what you eat.’
Now, however, it seems we need to take on board another motto: ‘You are when you eat’.
A review of studies on the effect of meal patterns on health shows that eating irregularly is linked to a greater risk of high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and obesity.
Researchers said more studies are needed to better understand the impact of when we eat on public health – particularly with the rise of shift work and ‘social jet lag’, which occurs when workers have a different sleeping pattern at the weekend.
Workers are skipping more meals and consuming them outside the family home, on-the-go, later in the day, and more irregularly.
Two papers, published in the journal Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, examine different eating habits, reviewing a number of dietary studies. They found eating inconsistently may affect our internal body clock – or circadian rhythms – which typically follow a 24-hour cycle.
Many metabolic processes in the body follow a circadian pattern such as appetite, digestion and the breaking down of fat, cholesterol and glucose. Food intake can influence our internal clocks, particularly in organs such as the liver and intestine.
And our central clock for sleeping is also regulated by the dark/light cycle which in turn can affect eating habits.
The scientists from King’s College London, Newcastle University and the University of Surrey said a number of studies have shown that people working shifts have an increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome. For shift work, changes in eating patterns are therefore an important area for future research. Social jet lag is estimated to affect more than 80 per cent of Europeans. The discrepancy between our internal body clock and social clock has been linked to a greater risk of diseases such as obesity and metabolic syndrome, while shorter periods of sleep have been linked to weight gain.
The researchers also looked at studies that suggest a greater number of daily meals is linked to a greater risk of obesity. But they said that conversely, without a reduced calorie intake, fewer meals are unlikely to bring health benefits.
They added that we should consider ‘with whom we eat’ – pointing to evidence that regular family meals contribute to healthy eating habits in children and adolescents.
Moreover, some studies have found a link between how regularly people eat and what they choose to eat, for example with poorer food choices linked to breakfast skipping.
In the UK and US, the proportion of energy intake increases gradually across the day, with breakfast providing the lowest proportion of energy and dinner the greatest.
Dr Gerda Pot, of King’s College London, said: ‘There seems to be some truth in the saying “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper”, however, this warrants further investigation.
‘Whilst we have a much better understanding today of what we should be eating, we are still left with the question as to which meal should provide us with the most energy.’
‘Although the evidence suggests that eating more calories later in the evening is associated with obesity, we are still far from understanding whether our energy intake should be distributed equally across the day or whether breakfast should contribute the greatest proportion of energy, followed by lunch and dinner.’
Daily Mail