Eat Junk Before Sunset; If You Have To

I briefly went through an article published on the link between obesity and metabolic syndrome with the time when we eat our food. The bottom line is that anything we eat after sun set is ‘fat’. Of course, that is an overstatement, but it roughly conveys the message. There is an important component in body metabolism called circadian rhythm (body clock). Based on the day-night pattern our body has developed rhythm for metabolic activities. It is expected that we are active during daytime and have most of the meals during that period. Our body prefers to give a rest to food metabolism during night. So if you start snacking around midnight, the body won’t be prepared for that. It may not wake of all the system to completely metabolize the food you eat, but it just store it as fat to convert it to usable ATPs at a later point of time. The study is done in mice. The study shows that even if the animals eat high fat/high-fructose (=junk food of humans) during the normal wake up time they can maintain a health body weight. There are different conditions they try in the study, but basic message is that if you can avoid late night snacking (or preferably, eat food a regular time and have an early dinner) you will be doing yourself a big favor by reducing the chance of metabolic syndrome, obesity and diabetes.