EATING LATE ENHANCES APPETITE AND CONTRIBUTES TO OBESITY

 There is more and more data being generated that clearly demonstrates that we are not only "what we eat" but also "when we eat.

The largest contributor to overweight and obese states, which then contribute to cardiovascular mortality, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), type 2 diabetes, the metabolic syndrome, and more pathologies, is consumption of calories in vast excess of what is necessary to sustain a healthy body weight. Also contributing to these major disease states is the timing of when one consumes food, more so than the composition of one's diet. Overconsumption of food is directly associated with disruptions in the circadian rhythms that control meal timing as well as meal metabolism.

As I recently wrote about:

EATING LATE ENHANCES APPETITE AND CONTRIBUTES TO OBESITY

eating late is directly correlated to the development of overweight and obese states, in large part due to the induction of appetite and the altered metabolism in adipose tissue (fat).

Another study, published in the prestigious journal Science, has also shown that meal timing exerts significant negative effects on appetite and metabolism which contributes to overweight and obese states:

Time-restricted feeding mitigates obesity through adipocyte thermogenesis

The findings of this study, although carried out in laboratory animals, clearly demonstrates that feeding at the wrong time of day exacerbates diet-induced obesity. When animals were restricted to eating during the normal active period, which for mice is at night (i.e. no light) but for humans is during the day (i.e. during the hours of light), there was a demonstrable improvement in metabolic health. In other words, eating at the wrong time, that which does not conform to the normal circadian rhythms, contributes to obesity and the development of the metabolic syndrome.

The major contributor to this misalignment of feeding times and the development of obesity and the related disorders of the metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes, was altered adipose tissue (fat) metabolism. The results from this study strongly indicate that the "clock" of normal adipocytes (the primary cell type of adipose tissue) is disrupted by consumption of food at non-normal time periods, but can be rescued by food consumption during the normal active period.

Eat healthy and eat at the right time of day to prevent obesity and the consequent early mortality associated with this pathological state.