Late dinners followed by late breakfasts are healthy, says Tim Spector!

Tim Spector from King’s College London has another useful study. It states that having late dinners is not all that bad. Provided you also eat a late breakfast the next day morning. This is against the popular belief that late night dinners could lead to weight gain and cause a lot of other health issues.

Tim Spector and his new study

Tim Spector, the professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London has a lot of ongoing research on eating habits and diet. It is a common belief that eating dinner late at night is not healthy. Because it can cause a person to put on weight and also lead to a number of other health issues.

In order to verify this statement, Tim carried out a research on 80k adult eating habits in the UK. He investigated the different eating times of people and the window periods within which they have their meals. These details were collected as part of the data from patients attending or consulting his nutrition company Zoe.

The complete results are not out but will be released to public by end of this year. But certain preliminary findings are worth knowing about.

Late dinners and health

Tim’s a analysis of the patient data showed that many of his patients especially those from the Continent had late dinners. It was as late as 9.30 pm. But despite such late night meals, these people were otherwise healthy. Moreover, they maintained their weight and were not obese or overweight.

Tim explains that the reason for this is that most of these late diners also had a late breakfast. They usually had their first meal of the day at 11.30 am or so. It was more like a brunch (breakfast cum lunch) for them. And by doing so, they were able to achieve a fasting period of 14 hours which is good for metabolism and weight.

Professor Tim opines that the emphasis on early dinners being healthy came from small scale studies on mostly young people. And it never considered the fasting periods or breakfast timings in the analysis.

Tim’s opinion

Tim is of the opinion that the previous studies that claim that early dinners are healthier have shown exaggerated benefits for health. And the real benefits are only small.

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Tim is an advocate of time-restricted eating. Hence, in case of late night dinners, he found that those who also had late breakfasts felt more energetic in the morning. He adds that gut microbes also need rest.

And people can decide that rest time for their gut bacteria based on their own life schedules. He reassures:

‘People often eat late because of jobs and children and they shouldn’t feel guilty about it.’

‘The important thing is not to snack at night, to try not to eat breakfast early and to try not to go to bed within two hours of eating dinner.’