People eat almost constantly for about 15 hours a day, which is nearly all of their waking hours, a new study shows. Scientists made the surprising finding by studying smartphone pictures that participants took before eating or drinking anything each day.
Satchidananda Panda works at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. As a circadian biologist, he studies bodily functions that follow a roughly 24-hour — or circadian — cycle. Previous studies by Panda’s team had shown that limiting when mice or fruit flies ate could affect weight gain and heart health. But some scientists had challenged the usefulness of those studies, notes Panda. They had argued that these animal studies didn’t apply to humans — because everybody knows that people eat three meals a day within a 12-hour period.
Panda and lab colleague Shubhroz Gill weren’t convinced, however. So the two scientists recruited 156 people in the San Diego, Calif., area to use their smartphones and photograph everything that went in their mouths for three weeks. The participants didn’t know it, but their phones added a time stamp to each food picture. Some participants also wore a wristband that tracked their activity and how much light they were exposed to.
The researchers analyzed the eating patterns. And for most people, they found no clear breakfast, lunch or dinner times. People instead started eating about an hour and a half after waking. And they kept noshing until a couple of hours before bedtime. The researchers saw no large breaks between meals. Overall, 25 percent of calories were eaten before noon, and 37.5 percent after 6 p.m. On weekends, people in the new study started eating an hour or more later than on weekdays. That’s as if they changed time zones every weekend. When people fly somewhere far away and change time zones within a few hours, they experience jet lag — a disruption of the timing of their normal body processes. The kind of changes in the timing of eating that were found in the new study may cause similar physical effects, Panda says.
The new study involved a small group of people. But its data add to a growing body of evidence showing that the timing of meals can affect health. Panda and Gill published their new paper online September 24 in Cell Metabolism. (Gill has now moved to a job at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.)
People eat almost constantly for about 15 hours a day, which is nearly all of their waking hours, a new study shows. Scientists made the surprising finding by studying smartphone pictures that participants took before eating or drinking anything each day. Satchidananda Panda works at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. As a circadian biologist, he studies bodily functions that follow a roughly 24-hour — or circadian — cycle. Previous studies by Panda’s team had shown that limiting when mice or fruit flies ate could affect weight gain and heart health. But some scientists had challenged the usefulness of those studies, notes Panda. They had argued that these animal studies didn’t apply to humans — because everybody knows that people eat three meals a day within a 12-hour period. Panda and lab colleague Shubhroz Gill weren’t convinced, however. So the two scientists recruited 156 people in the San Diego, Calif., area to use their smartphones and photograph everything that went in their mouths for three weeks. The participants didn’t know it, but their phones added a time stamp to each food picture. Some participants also wore a wristband that tracked their activity and how much light they were exposed to. The researchers analyzed the eating patterns. And for most people, they found no clear breakfast, lunch or dinner times. People instead started eating about an hour and a half after waking. And they kept noshing until a couple of hours before bedtime. The researchers saw no large breaks between meals. Overall, 25 percent of calories were eaten before noon, and 37.5 percent after 6 p.m. On weekends, people in the new study started eating an hour or more later than on weekdays. That’s as if they changed time zones every weekend. When people fly somewhere far away and change time zones within a few hours, they experience jet lag — a disruption of the timing of their normal body processes. The kind of changes in the timing of eating that were found in the new study may cause similar physical effects, Panda says.The new study involved a small group of people. But its data add to a growing body of evidence showing that the timing of meals can affect health. Panda and Gill published their new paper online September 24 in Cell Metabolism. (Gill has now moved to a job at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.)
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