Do you sit down to breakfast early or late? The answer matters, research suggests, because when you eat may make a difference in your overall health and even how long you live.
A new study has found that people tend to experience gradual shifts in meal times as they age, and for older individuals, eating later — especially breakfast — may be linked to underlying physical and mental problems including depression, fatigue, and oral health issues.
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Most notably, the findings suggested that people who ate breakfast on the late side were slightly more likely to die prematurely compared with people who had their first meal earlier.
“Older adults may be particularly affected by shifts in meal timing because of health challenges and lifestyle transitions,” says lead study author Hassan Dashti, PhD, RD, an assistant professor and research scientist with a focus in nutrition, chronobiology, and genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
“Monitoring when older adults eat, particularly their breakfast time, may offer an easy-to-track marker of overall health and aging,” he says.
Meal Times May Help Maintain a Healthy Body Rhythm
For this analysis, Dr. Dashti and collaborators wanted to see how certain eating patterns might influence health outcomes in later life. The team followed nearly 3,000 adults in the United Kingdom for 22 years on average. Participants ranged in age from 42 to 94, nearly three-quarters were female, and 83 percent were not employed.
Participants were roughly split down the middle for earlier versus later breakfast times: The early group tended to have breakfast closer to 8 a.m., while the later group ate closer to 9.
As participants aged, they were more likely to have their meals later. Each additional decade was associated with a delay in breakfast of 8 minutes and a delay in dinner of nearly 4 minutes.
Results published in Communications Medicine showed that the 10-year survival rate (the percent of participants still living since the beginning of the study) was 89.5 percent for the early group, compared with 86.7 percent for the late group.
“The difference was statistically significant, but it was modest,” says Dashti. “These findings should be considered preliminary and interpreted with caution.”
The results showed that each additional hour of delayed breakfast was tied to an 11 percent increase in the odds of dying during the research period.
Later breakfast time was consistently connected with having physical and mental health conditions such as depression, excessive sleepiness, and dental problems. Researchers also found a link between later mealtimes and difficulty with meal preparation and worse sleep.
These things can make it harder for older adults to start the day with a meal, according to Dashti.
“For example, depression and fatigue may reduce appetite or slow down morning routines, while dental or chewing problems can make eating uncomfortable, leading people to postpone breakfast,” he says. “Because our study is observational, we can’t say for sure that these health issues cause later breakfasts, only that they often occur together.”
A Surprising Trend But a Possible Sign of Health Trouble
Meal timing (the fancy term is chrononutrition) influences overall health and specific body functions, including sleep, metabolism, and circadian rhythms (the body’s so-called internal clock).
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Because older adults are known to wake up earlier, the study authors expected meal times to shift earlier as well. They were surprised to see the opposite, with participants eating their meals later as they aged, especially breakfast, Dashti says.
“It’s counterintuitive from what we see in everyday living,” says Deborah Kado, MD, a geriatrics specialist and co-director of the Stanford Longevity Center in Palo Alto, California. “My observation at assisted living facilities is that older people want to eat earlier.”
Dr. Kado, who was not involved in this study, would like to see more extensive research in a broader population to confirm if later eating among seniors is really a growing trend.
With her own patients, she has noticed that those who eat later do seem to have more cognitive issues.
“If you’re caring for an older adult and you see a change in their meal timing, particularly with breakfast, you might question them,” she says. “You may ask, ‘Hey, I’ve noticed that you’ve had a change in your behavior. Why do you think that is?’”
Study Has Some Limitations
There are several limitations to this study, says Kathryn Nicole Starr, PhD, an associate professor of medicine and senior fellow with the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development at the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina.
The findings were based on self-reported meal and sleep times, which are not always reliable, she says. The participant population also was narrow, in that they were all from the United Kingdom, largely of European ancestry, and predominantly women.
“Additionally, only timing was assessed, and not what was actually eaten, so there is no dietary data to determine if diet composition may have an impact,” says Dr. Starr, who was not involved in the research.
New Study Supports Existing Findings on the Benefits of an Early Breakfast
The paper adds to prior research that suggests earlier breakfast can have positive overall effects, including benefits for heart health, blood sugar control, and weight management.
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“Up until now, we had limited insight into how the timing of meals evolves later in life and how this shift relates to overall health and longevity,” says Dashti. “These results add new meaning to the saying ‘Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,’ especially for older individuals.”
