What we eat is very important; that is such common knowledge, but have you ever gone beyond the nutrients and calories of food? Have you ever looked at the timing of meals? If you haven’t, that isn’t a bad thing. Chrononutrition is a new field that is gaining popularity. 

While there are many things that doctors and researchers don’t know about chrononutrition and how it affects our bodies, I put together science-backed strategies that you can follow to start incorporating chrononutrition into your everyday life. I hope that you can learn something new from my article!

What is chrononutrition?

Chrononutrition is a rapidly evolving field that studies how food intake timing affects our health and well-being. Chrononutritious behaviors include intermittent fasting, meal skipping, and breakfast or dinner latency.

Circadian rhythms are 24-hour cycles regulated by our individual circadian clocks. The relationships between food timing and nutrition (chrononutrition) affect our circadian rhythmicity, which contributes to the disruption of our bodies’ natural 24-hour clock and can influence the development of metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes. 

You may or may not know that light is the main zeitgeber when it comes to regulating our circadian rhythms, but food intake also plays a big role in our circadian systems. Research has shown that our metabolic health is not only affected by the quality and quantity of food intake but also by the timing, uniformity, and energy distribution of eating times throughout the 24-hour day and across days. 

Why is Chrononutrition Important?

Chrononutrition has an effect on a variety of health aspects, including glucose metabolism, cardiovascular health, metabolism, obesity, and inflammation.

Glucose Metabolism:

• Time of day influences the postprandial glucose response to a meal (blood glucose levels after eating). 
• Even if a meal is identical, your blood sugar does not respond the same way to it if you eat it at different periods of time.
• Glucose metabolism is not not only affected by what you eat alone, but also by what times you eat

Cardiovascular health:

• Delayed first meals and late last meals are linked with increased risks of cardiovascular diseases
• A 2023 analysis showed that French adults who had a 1-hour delay in their first meal had a 6% higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

Metabolism

• Irregular eating habits disrupt the synchrony of peripheral clocks with the central clock, resulting in circadian misalignment
• Circadian misalignment messes up metabolic regulation, or homeostasis
• Results in impaired glucose control, increased insulin levels, insulin resistance, and a glucose response that mimics a prediabetic state

Obesity

• Later eating timing affects appetite-regulating hormones 
• Reduces the 24-hour “satiety hormone” (serum leptin), which signals to your body that you’re full.
• It increases the 24-hour “hunger hormone” (ghrelin-leptin), which leads to greater hunger levels
• Later eating is also associated with lowered energy levels as well as changes in gene expression that increase lipid storage and and promote obesity

Inflammation:

• Irregular eating timing patterns are associated with higher C-reactive-protein (CRP)
• A sign of high inflammation levels is linked to high blood pressure and cardiovascular complications. 

Chrononutrition Myths vs Facts

MYTH #1: Breakfast is the most important meal

Research says that breakfast is just another meal, and there is no established relationship between skipping breakfast and metabolic consequences.

FACT: The length of the overnight fast matters more than breakfast itself

In a study, two people ate breakfast. Both consumers had their meals at 2200 h the night before, but one ate breakfast the next morning at 0600 h, while the other ate breakfast at 1000 h. There was a difference in metabolism, but not due to the breakfast itself but the length of the overnight fast.

MYTH #2: You gain weight if you eat at night

In Japanese adults with no obesity, skipping breakfast increased odds of developing metabolic disorders and obesity, but only when combined with late-night dinners. 

FACT: Combined eating patterns matter more than clock time

1 in 5 adults skip breakfast. Despite the fact that many people believe breakfast is the most important meal of the day, your overall eating patterns and your chronotype matter most of all. 

MYTH #3: All intermittent fasting is the same

FACT: The timing of your eating window matters

In 12 RCTs on time-restricted eating, containing 730 adults with obesity or overweight, eating at an early or later time both had an impact on weight and insulin resistance; early time-restricted eating was more effective in insulin resistance.

MYTH #4: It’s bad to eat carbs at night

FACT: Carb intake timing can be combines with other nutrients

Changing what your dinner is made of in terms of macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbs), specifically by increasing your protein and fat intake, helps keep your blood sugar more stable instead of spiking. 

MYTH #5: Everyone should eat at the same time

FACT: Your chronotype decides your optimal eating times

Chrononutrition is influenced by an individual’s chronotype. For example, if you are an evening chronotype, it is recommended you eat later in the day. 

Strategies to Incorporate Chrononutrition Into Your Daily Life

Strategy 1: Eat most of your calories early on in the day.

This is called front-loading your calories. Eat the most during the morning so you don’t feel the need to eat much at night. 

During a study, the group who consumed more calories early on in their day saw a greater decrease in fasting blood glucose and insulin when compared with consuming more calories around dinner time. Groups had similar calorie intake.

Strategy 2: Make your evening meals as nutritious as possible

Do whatever you need to do to make your evening meals healthy. Maybe you need to stop eating ice cream or incorporate more vegetables and eat less rice. Tailor your meals so you get the most health benefits you can get. 

Modifying the macronutrients in dinner meals by increasing protein and fat content is a simple strategy for improving your blood sugar levels. A high-protein meal in the evening created fewer glucose spikes compared to eating a standard meal around the same time. 

Strategy 3: Eat your food in a certain order

The order in which you eat food affects your body’s metabolic response.

Eating vegetables first, then meat, and lastly rice is the best order to eat to decrease your postprandial blood glucose. That order also helps to reduce glycemic response without the need for extra insulin in adults. 

Strategy 4: Eat your low-glycemic food in the morning

Eating low glycemic index food in the morning helps your blood sugar rise more slowly and return to its baseline to a greater effect than when consumed at night. Lower GI foods were more effective in controlling glucose in the morning. This could possibly be explained by the decrease of insulin sensitivity during the day. 

Strategy 5: Strategically time your nutrient intake 

When you time your fat and protein intake while also pairing it with carbs, such as bread and rice, you reduce your body’s glycemic response. Taking EOC 15 minutes before eating a meal helps prevent a blood sugar spike after eating rice. This in turn affects how much insulin your body releases, which is key for maintaining stable blood sugar. 

Strategy 6: Eat at the same times consistently

Day-to-day variability in your eating times and a mismatch between eating times on weekends and weekdays are associated with higher BMI, higher waist circumference, higher average blood sugar, and higher blood pressure. And a 30-minute difference in weekend-to-weekday eating times is related to a 13% rise in CRP levels, and then a one-hour difference between eating times led to a 45% elevation in CRP levels.

Conclusion

I’m sure there might be many other ways to incorporate chrononutrition into your daily life. Continue to do your own research and find strategies that work for you. This topic was very interesting to research, as I never thought that my food timing could impact my health so much. As someone who doesn’t eat at the same times during weekdays and weekends, after writing this post I am going to start being consistent with my eating time.

I did not write this article to fearmonger; I just wanted to put research together for other inquisitive minds out there looking to be as healthy as possible. Hopefully you learned something from me today, and thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to read my article.