New research suggests that eating breakfast earlier in the day may be associated with a longer lifespan. A decades-long study that tracked nearly 3,000 adults for approximately 30 years found that the timing of meals could be as critical as their content and may signal underlying health issues.
An international team led by Dr. Hassan Dashti of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School analyzed data on meal times, health conditions, genetics, and mortality for individuals aged 42 to 94. The findings, published in the journal Communications Medicine, revealed that as people age, they tend to eat both breakfast and dinner later, which shifts their eating midpoint and shortens their overall daily eating window.
The study identified several factors associated with this shift, including poor sleep, depression, dental problems, and lifestyle changes such as retirement or living alone. Dr. Dashti noted that while these health issues often occur alongside later meal times, the observational nature of the study means a direct causal link cannot be confirmed.
On average, each decade of aging was associated with an eight-minute delay in breakfast and a four-minute delay in dinner. Over the 22-year follow-up period, researchers recorded 2,361 deaths, finding that each one-hour delay in breakfast time was linked to an increased risk of mortality.
Older adults who consistently ate earlier meals had a 10-year survival rate of 89.5%, compared to 86.7% for late eaters. While Dr. Dashti acknowledged that this difference was “modest,” it was statistically significant.
The researchers concluded that later meal timing, especially for breakfast, could serve as a simple marker of health in older adults. These findings contribute to the growing field of “chrononutrition,” which examines how meal schedules impact health, and underscore the potential importance of circadian rhythms in healthy aging. Dashti recommends that older adults maintain a regular meal schedule as part of a broader strategy to promote health and longevity.
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