The Time You Eat Breakfast Can Predict How Long You’ll Live, According To Research
Eating breakfast can also decrease the risk of some pretty serious health issues.
Andrea Piacquadio | Pexels Want to live longer? The answer, according to new research, could be as simple as tweaking what time you eat in the morning. We’ve all heard it said that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” but it’s one that we tend to be pretty fickle about. We all live busy lives, and taking time to slow down in the morning to eat a solid meal can feel impossible.
Nevertheless, breakfast is important, and most people actually do eat it. The CDC reported that 84.4% of Americans over the age of 20 said they ate breakfast. The real question on some researchers’ minds was what time those people actually consumed breakfast, because it could have major implications for their health.
According to a new study, the earlier you eat breakfast, the longer you are likely to live.
The study was published in Communications Medicine and led by Hassan Dashti, PhD, RD, an assistant professor and research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Don Rauf reported on the study for Everyday Health.
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Rauf explained the methodology behind the study. Researchers examined breakfast eating habits among 3,000 adults in the U.K. between the ages of 42 and 94 for about 22 years. Almost 75% of participants were women, and 83% were unemployed. Researchers were particularly interested in when the participants ate breakfast. About half ate breakfast earlier, closer to 8:00 a.m., while the other half ate breakfast later, around 9:00.
Dr. Dashti and his colleagues noted that the older their participants got, the more likely they were to eat breakfast later. Every decade added onto someone’s age was typically associated with eating breakfast eight minutes later than they had previously. The survival rate at 10 years for study participants was 89.5% for those who ate breakfast earlier and 86.7% for the group that ate it later. While this wasn’t a huge difference, Dr. Dashti said it was “significant” enough that it shouldn’t be overlooked.
Some experts worried about the limitations of the study.
Rauf spoke with geriatrics specialist Dr. Deborah Kado, MD, co-director of the Stanford Longevity Center. Dr. Kado was not involved with the study, but she did review the results with some confusion. “It’s counterintuitive from what we see in everyday living,” she said. “My observation at assisted living facilities is that older people want to eat earlier.”
Even Dr. Dashti admitted to being surprised by the study’s results, as older people tend to wake up earlier, so it would stand to reason that they eat breakfast earlier as well. Nevertheless, researchers found that eating breakfast later was connected to conditions like depression, fatigue, and even dental issues.
Kathryn Nicole Starr, PhD, associate professor of medicine and senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development at the Duke University School of Medicine, was concerned by the sample of participants used. As she pointed out, most were women, and all were from the U.K. A more diverse sample may have yielded different results, or at least provided a more accurate picture of how people consume breakfast.
Other experts agree that eating breakfast earlier is best.
Albert Abayev, a registered dietician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said that it’s best to eat breakfast within two hours of waking. “This can promote sustained energy and improve performance, especially if you’re planning a workout or outdoor activity,” he stated.
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Similarly, in a separate study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, researchers concluded that the magic time to eat breakfast was 9:00 a.m. In their opinion, this was still early enough to actually be considered early, and eating earlier decreased the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 60%.
So, there’s really a whole host of health benefits that can be enjoyed from eating breakfast earlier. The next time you think you’ll do just one more thing before finally eating breakfast, it would be good to go ahead and take a meal break.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
