Not only what we eat influences our health, but also when we eat it. This has been revealed by a study carried out by members of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (USA), in which the Spanish Marta Garaulet has participated, who wanted to know the effects that eating food has sooner or later on factors such as hunger, calorie burning, and changes in the body’s adipose tissue.
The research, which has been published in the journal Cell Metabolism, has been carried out thanks to a group of 16 people with a body mass index (BMI) that fell within the range of overweight or obesity. Each of the patients carried out two protocols, one in which they had to eat early strictly and another with the same meals but four hours later.
To try to vary the results as little as possible, for two or three weeks before starting each of the protocols, the participants followed a fixed sleep and wake routine, and, in addition, in the three days before going to the laboratory they followed strict diets and the same meal times. Afterwards, they filled out questionnaires about their hunger levels, had several blood samples taken a day, and had their body temperature and energy expenditure measured.
Eating later could increase fat accumulation
The results that the researchers found indicated that when you ate later you were hungrier, since the levels of two appetite-regulating hormones, leptin and ghrelin, were altered. Specifically, they observed that leptin, which is responsible for informing the brain of satiety, was reduced during the period in which meals were eaten later, compared to when they were eaten earlier.
Levels of leptin, a hormone that reports satiety, were reduced during the period when meals were eaten later
In addition, when participants ate late, they showed slower calorie burning and adipose tissue gene expression targeting increased adipogenesis and reduced lipolysis, promoting fat storage, which could lead to development or worsening of obesity.
This discovery has made it possible to further clarify the converging physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying the correlation between eating late and an increased risk of developing obesity. Even so, the researchers want to continue studying it, especially in larger groups that include more women, since in this work there were only five females.
“In this study, we asked: Does the time we eat matter when everything else is held constant? And we found that eating four hours later makes a significant difference to our hunger levels, the way we burn calories after eating, and the way we store fat,” said lead author Nina Vujovic.
.
