Eating breakfast later as you get older could be linked to poorer health and an early death, according to a recent study of 3000 adults.
Following participants for an average of 22 years, scientists found that those who tended to eat breakfast later in the morning were slightly less likely to survive the following decade, with a lower 10-year survival rate compared to earlier eaters.
On average, study participants ate breakfast at about 8:20am, but those who pushed it closer to 9am or beyond were more likely to report problems such as depression, fatigue and poor oral health.
“These results add new meaning to the saying that ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’, especially for older individuals,” said lead author Dr Hassan Dashti, a nutrition scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Mass General Brigham.
“Our research suggests that changes in when older adults eat, especially the timing of breakfast, could serve as an easy-to-monitor marker of their overall health status.
“Also, encouraging older adults to have consistent meal schedules could become part of broader strategies to promoting healthy ageing and longevity.”
Participants were tracked for more than 20 years, during which they reported their health, meal times and, in some cases, provided blood samples.
Over time, the researchers observed that people tended to shift breakfast and dinner to later in the day, while squeezing their overall eating into a shorter daily window.
This was an observational study, so it doesn’t prove that delaying breakfast causes health problems or early death. It just suggests there might be a link.
Indeed, the scientists found that participants who were genetically predisposed to ‘night owl’ behaviour – waking up and going to bed later – tended to also eat their meals later in the day.
The authors said their findings were important given the growing popularity of intermittent fasting, where individuals deliberately extend their fasting window and often, as a result, eat their breakfasts later in the day.
“Later meal timing, especially delayed breakfast, is tied to both health challenges and increased mortality risk in older adults,” said Dashti.
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