Evening Meals and Metabolic Health: Key Insights
How Evening Meals Impact Your Health
NATION — Evening meals could make or break your metabolic health, a recent study warns. Poorly regulated blood sugar levels can contribute to type 2 diabetes development, greater cardiovascular risk, and chronic inflammation.
Learn more about type 2 diabetes from the American Diabetes Association
Expert Recommendations for Dinner
Experts say that metabolic and hormonal factors make it important to eat the lightest meal of the day as dinner: fewer carbohydrates, more healthy fats and protein, and no desserts. Consistent, quality sleep will also go a long way toward balancing appetite and glucose metabolism, experts say.
Get tips on healthy eating from the USDA
Study Highlights the Risks of Heavy Evening Meals
After the holidays and the epic meals most of us consume, a study suggests that most of us should avoid the temptation to eat heavily later in the day. The study, conducted by teams from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, and Columbia University in New York, indicates that eating more than 45% of daily calorie intake after 5 p.m. may be linked to poorer glucose tolerance, particularly in older adults with prediabetes or early type 2 diabetes.
This can significantly harm health over time, leading to a greater risk of type 2 diabetes development, increased cardiovascular risk, and chronic inflammation.
Explore the research from Columbia University
New Findings on Timing and Glucose Metabolism
The previously assumed consequence of late eating was primarily weight gain due to a slower metabolism as we wind down and our bodies prepare for and engage in sleep. The new study suggests that, regardless of a person’s weight or general caloric intake, the time of day when they eat can have significant consequences on glucose metabolism.
Study Details
The study classified 26 participants between the ages of 50 and 75 — who had overweight or obesity, as well as prediabetes or type 2 diabetes — into two groups: “early eaters” who consumed most of their daily calories before 5 p.m., and “late eaters” who ate 45% or more of their calories after 5 p.m. for 14 days.
The groups ate a comparable amount of daily calories and macronutrients. However, late eaters consumed almost double the number of calories after 5 p.m., consuming more fat and carbohydrates overall and trending toward higher protein and sugar intake than early eaters. In oral glucose tolerance tests, the late eaters had notably higher blood glucose levels after 30 and 60 minutes, indicating a lower tolerance of glucose (sugar). This trend was maintained regardless of participants’ body weight and fat mass, calorie intake, and diet composition.
Why is Eating Late Bad for Your Health?
Nate Wood, MD, an instructor of medicine and the director of culinary medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, explained that eating later in the day or into the night can add weight to the body simply because most people are much less active at night and not active at all while sleeping.
Ideal Meals for the Evening
It is probably not the most popular answer during the holidays, but dinner should ultimately be the lightest meal you eat, Shafipour advised. This means fewer carbohydrates — avoiding pasta, mashed potatoes, rice — and indulging less in dessert and alcohol.
“You want your dinner or the latest meal to be the lowest carbohydrate and simple carbohydrate meal,” Shafipour explained. “So you know this would be something with some healthy sources of protein and some healthy sources of fat, and maybe a salad. So optimally, you want to avoid desserts, alcohol, any type of refined sugar, white rice, white bread, potatoes, even a lot of fruits, because fruits also have sugar fructose.”
Find guidance on healthy meal planning at Providence
Sleep and Glucose Metabolism
The balance between sleep and eating is important to strike for metabolism and overall health. Because sleep is so important, Wood said that a consistent pattern each night was the most important factor. “Most adults need 7 to 8 hours of sleep per night. Getting less than that or more than that can have negative effects on our health,” Wood pointed out. “I recommend patients try to go to bed at the same time every night. This means that if you go to bed at 10 p.m. on weeknights, try to go to bed no later than 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. on weekends. The more consistent we can keep our sleep schedule, the better,” he advised.
Shafipour explained that the hormonal changes that occur during sleep have a significant effect on appetite throughout the day: “Sleep is also by itself very important, because we have the hormone leptin, which is an appetite-suppressing hormone, get secreted, and it peaks around 6 or 6 and a half hours of sleep. So the optimal sleep schedule for an average adult would be between 7 to 8 hours so you get enough leptin and ghrelin, which is the appetite hormone that one also doesn’t stay up too much during the day. So if we sleep less than 6 and a half hours, we’ll notice that we’re hungrier during the day looking for food more.”
Learn about sleep health from the National Sleep Foundation
— Finn Cohen
