The Timing of Your Meals: A Key to Longevity?
Recent study uncovers the impact of meal timing on health and lifespan
What if I told you that a fruit snack after breakfast could reduce your cancer risk by 45%? Or that dairy after dinner might lower your risk of cardiovascular disease by 33%? Recent research has uncovered surprising connections between meal timing and longevity that challenge conventional wisdom.
Our previous post, "The Fasting Fallacy," explored how eating more frequent, smaller meals can benefit overall health. Now, let's examine how the composition and timing of specific foods might impact health outcomes.
A recent study analyzing the NHANES (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) dataset investigated how common eating patterns for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—as well as snacks after these meals—impacted all-cause mortality (ACM), cardiovascular disease (CVD), and cancer mortality1. The results are fascinating:
Meals: Timing Matters
Breakfast: The Neutral Start
Interestingly, the type of breakfast—whether Western, fruit-based, or starchy—showed no significant impact on mortality or disease risk. This suggests that the mere act of eating breakfast might be more important than what you eat.
Lunch: It's What You Eat, Not When
The study found significant effects for lunch, but these can be explained by the foods included rather than the timing:
A fruit-based lunch was associated with an 18% reduction in overall mortality and a 44% reduction in cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality.
A Western-style lunch increased CVD mortality risk by 44%.
Vegetable and starchy lunches showed no significant impact.
So why would a Western lunch be bad for CVD but not breakfast or dinner? Each meal archetype was accompanied by a profile of the foods it included, which could vary between meals. Looking into the details of the Western lunch, it becomes clear where it's worse than a Western dinner. Red meat may be what's for Western dinner, but for lunch, Westerners switch to the easier-to-grab or put in a sandwich processed meats, which are worse for CVD.
Processed meat is also included in Western breakfast, but the Western breakfast includes legumes, which the other Western meals omit. The British sausage and baked beans breakfast is more common than I expected. The positive impact of the legumes offsets the harms from the processed meats, leaving Western breakfast neutral for CVD.
The benefits of a Fruit Lunch in lowering ACM by 18%, primarily by lowering CVD mortality by 44%, also look mysterious until the profile of foods included is reviewed. Among the Fruit meals (and snacks), only the Fruit Lunch contains nuts. Eating a small handful of nuts daily reduces ACM by 17%, which, with some variance, explains the 18% ACM reduction for eating nuts for lunch.
Dinner: The Vegetable Advantage
The vegetable dinner lowered all-cause mortality by 31%, CVD mortality by 23%, and cancer mortality by 37%. Western and fruit-based dinners were neutral. The vegetable dinner profile includes lots of tomatoes and dark vegetables (basically salad), but not starchy vegetables. In the "Fasting Fallacy" post, I noted that skipping dinner can help people lose weight, so the lower calorie content of the vegetable dinner may be a cause of its health benefits. I also wonder if vegetable dinners have benefited from a large amount of gut microbiome-friendly fiber, but given a fruit dinner did not show benefit; it seems like the lower calories of a vegetable dinner or the custom of eating a salad before the meal compared to fruit after the meal is more likely. A good reason to eat a salad before dinner!
Snacks: The Hidden Heroes (and Villain)
After Breakfast: Fruit for the Win
Fruit after breakfast is excellent, with 22% reduced ACM, principally driven by a 45% reduction in cancer. This is a startling result. First, this is a "pure" fruit result. Unlike the Fruit Lunch mentioned above, there are no nuts included here -- nearly all fruit. Second, for comparison, eating two servings of fruit daily would only reduce ACM by 9%. Why would fruit be especially beneficial as an after-breakfast snack? Well, to speculate, it may be that cancer has an increased growth period after the sugar from breakfast, and an after-breakfast hit of fruit polyphenols is the best time to cut this off. There is evidence that at least ovarian cancer cells proliferate in the mid to late morning2, and the most effective dosage time for some chemotherapy medicines is 8-10 AM3.
All-day Long: Avoid Trans Fats and Potato Chips
Starchy snacks are terrible after breakfast, lunch, or dinner, with a 50% increased ACM, coming from a 44-57% increase in CVD mortality. The study mentions that these are potato chips, which makes the severe health and CVD effects clear- the years covered in the NHANES data set were before the US banned trans fats. Other studies of fried potato foods find them to be close to neutral -- no significant benefit or harm -- but trans fat is a clear harm. Although trans fats are banned in the US, over 50% of the world's population live in countries where they are still included in foods4. For example, It's not banned in the UK or Japan5.
That said, commercial baked goods also contain trans fats, and if trans fats were the only factor, this should have affected grain snacks as well, which include refined grain snacks like cookies or cake. There may be something particularly unhealthy about potato chips between meals that should be avoided.
After Dinner: The Ice Cream Surprise
A dairy snack after dinner is great, with 18% reduced ACM, mostly from a 33% reduction in CVD death. Dairy after dinner, you say? Are these cat people drinking a saucer of milk before bed? Nope. The Dairy Snack profile lists milk as the primary category, and, from looking at common night snacks, it's most likely ice cream. Cheese and yogurt are included, but their portions are small. Ice cream to extend longevity? This isn't the first study to show this result, which gets the cold shoulder from nutritionists. The Atlantic Monthly wrote about it in May 20236. The benefits of an ice cream snack show up in a 22% reduction in diabetes7 and 12% reduced CVD risk8. An interesting addition of this study is that the after-luch dairy snack, with virtually identical dairy contents, showed no benefit. There may be something special about having a cold snack or the intact dairy fats in ice cream before bedtime.
Green salad dinner with ice cream dessert, anyone?
Key Takeaways
Transfats are unhealthy. If not banned where you live, avoid foods that have them.
Avoid potato chip snacks.
A dark green salad with dinner helps prolong longevity and avoid cancer and CVD.
Taking away a banana, apple, or other fruit for a morning snack keeps the cancer away.
Dinner, dessert, or night snack? Ice cream is the best, even from a health perspective.
Based on these findings, why not experiment with your own meal composition and timing? Try fruits as a morning snack, start with salad for dinner, and have an evening ice cream snack. Your body might thank you for a longer, healthier life.
Have you tried adjusting your meals for health benefits? Share your experiences in the comments below!
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