When should I eat my evening meal?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
What time's dinner? Five? Six? Ten o'clock? Depending on where you are in the world, the answer can be wildly different. And in today's episode of The Food Chain from the BBC World Service with me, Ruth Alexander, we want to know what's the best time to have your evening meal. We'll be finding out how, for your body, it's got as much to do with when you sleep as when you eat.
It's like trying to repair a road without actually closing it. It's not going to work very well.
how we arrived at the mealtimes we have.
For the first 200,000 years, humans ate what was called one continuous picnic, right?
And why timing matters.
People who are eating later in the day are more likely to have poorer metabolic health.
Joining me to discuss this are Emily Manoogian, a circadian rhythm researcher at the Salk Institute in California, the United States, Professor Sarah Berry, a nutrition scientist at King's College London in the UK, and Professor Geoffrey Pilcher, a food historian at the University of Toronto in Canada. And of course, I had to ask what time they all had dinner. Here's Emily. Oh, good question.
You know, humans are actually very bad at knowing when they ate unless you write it down. But I think I actually ate around 6.15 last night.
That's very precise.
It was because I got my daughter home from dance class and then we ate when we got home. So I have a marker there.
Sarah, how about you? I would say, yeah, I had my dinner about eight. And it was dictated as well by my child care duties that I took my son karting. And that's when we got back from karting. When I had my last meal is a whole different matter. So I'm quite a snacker.
What question does this episode ask about the timing of the evening meal?
So I probably was snacking away until probably about 10.30. Not that I'm advocating for snacking here, Ruth, but giving you an honest answer.
Not just me then. Yes, I had some toast and honey about that time. Having had my main meal about five o'clock, then I found I was a little bit hungry later. Geoffrey, what time did you eat last night?
About six, something around there.
So my next question is, when should you eat dinner? Emily?
Really, it's not any... specific time on a clock. There's no universal magic hour from our point of view, at least. And I think really what's driving everything is the circadian system, which is an anticipatory system, which helps your body prepare for what it needs to do. And that is coordinated by the light that you're around, by your sleep-wake schedules, all those other kinds of things. So depending on your environment and your schedules, everyone's going to have a little bit different time. And I think the kind of easiest way to cheat that answer is to say it should end at least three or four hours before you go to bed. So if you're going to bed at midnight, you should stop eating by eight or nine.
Right, okay. So it's slightly different for everybody, but that is a good rule of thumb, three or four hours before bedtime.
And I think, Ruth, another point to add to what Emily said is I think thinking about when you have your last meal should also take into consideration when you have your first meal. We now know that having a smaller eating window and a period overnight of at least 12 hours when your body is at rest, your body is not digesting food, for example, is beneficial for health. And so if you are someone... that gets up early and is having your breakfast at 6am, for example, you might want to consider bringing forward your last meal a little bit earlier.
To what kind of time?
Gosh.
6pm. Oh no, you would have to finish at 6pm. So maybe 5pm.
Usually it's recommended to be like a 10 or 11 hour eating window. So if you're starting your breakfast at 6am, you should probably be ending by 4 or 5pm. Six, I would say, is the latest you should be consuming something. I think longer than a 12-hour window, we see kind of some negative effects there. And I think 10 hours is perfectly reasonable and feasible for most people.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:18
2
What question does this episode ask about the timing of the evening meal?
2:18–15:21
3
How do circadian rhythms determine when you should stop eating before bed?
15:21–20:43
4
How long should your daily eating window be for better metabolic health?
20:43–27:42