ZOE Science & Nutrition - Should you avoid late-night snacks? - The Big IF Dailies

Episode Date: October 22, 2022

We’ve all been there at least once, hovering by the fridge and looking for something to graze on just before bed. What you eat after dark can disrupt your sleep and digestion. Yet new evidence suggests that when we snack is less important than what we snack on, so suddenly that midnight snack may not be a guilty pleasure after all.   In today’s daily episode of ZOE Science & Nutrition, Jonathan is joined by Dr Sarah Berry to answer the question: should you avoid late-night snacks? This episode is part of a limited series to celebrate the launch of The Big IF Study: The world’s biggest clinical study to discover how intermittent fasting affects our mood, energy and hunger.  Want to know if intermittent fasting can work for you?  TAKE PART for FREE: joinzoe.com/thebigif Download our FREE guide — Top 10 Tips to Live Healthier: https://zoe.com/freeguide This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions.

Let's imagine this scene. It's 10pm. Your family's in bed and you find yourself in the kitchen. The freezer looks at you. It asks, what better way to enjoy the moment than with a late night snack? Ice cream perhaps? You feel inclined to agree. After all, you've earned it. A delicious date with Ben and Jerry's. But it turns out that however tasty, you may want to think twice before your next nighttime expedition. This is Zoë Science and Nutrition. I'm Jonathan Wolf.

Today on the show, leading nutritional scientist, Sarah Berry, explains what eating in the evening means for your health. This episode is part of a limited series to celebrate the launch of the Big If Study, the world's biggest clinical study to discover how intermittent fasting really affects us. By inviting our amazing community of citizen scientists to take part in this experiment, we hope to understand whether intermittent fasting really can improve how we feel,

from our hunger levels to our mood and energy. To take part for free and discover if intermittent fasting can work for you, simply go to joinzoe.com slash thebigif, that's T-H-E-B-I-G-I-F, or via the link in the show notes. The countdown is on, two days until you can join. When I asked Sarah why she'd be a good person to tell us about the impact of late night snacking,

surprisingly, she didn't reference her 25 years of experience as a nutritional scientist or the countless nutritional research papers she's published. The reason? Because I love late night snacking, but I know I should not be doing it. But seriously, Jonathan, I've spent many of the time that I've worked in nutritional science, conducting studies, using snacks as a vehicle in which to study how different foods impact our health. So in this episode, we're talking specifically about late night snacking. But you might think that the amount of post meal pick pick-me-ups you're indulging in would be the most important thing, rather than at what time. You'd be wrong.

What we find is that the frequency that people snack doesn't really matter. But what we find matters is the timing that they have those snacks. People that are snacking late in the evening, even if they're having the same amount of snacking events, so the same amount of snacks as someone that snacks earlier in the day, those people that snack late in the evening have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. They have higher inflammation. They have a higher body weight and other unfavorable risk measures. So what's going on here? Why would the time when we eat make such a difference? So there's some really good evidence emerging now to show how important a circadian rhythm is. So

this is our body clock. We know that every cell in our body has its own internal body clock. And we know that if we snack or consume food late at night, that it disrupts this internal body clock and it has unfavourable downstream effects on our health. Going against your body's internal clock is a bad move. And eating late at night may actually make you hungrier the next day. If you're trying to lose weight, you probably don't want that. On top of this, some studies suggest that late night snacking is associated with several risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The severity of these effects differs for each of us. It comes down to something called your chronotype. In other words, whether you're an early bird or a

night owl. Yep, it's a real thing. People's chronotype refers to whether you're a morning or you're an evening person. And that's assessed according to whether you naturally want to wake up early or you naturally want to wake up late. There's some evidence to suggest that how you respond to food may also be related to your chronotype. But why would being a morning person affect how your body deals with late night snacking? Well, it's the same as needing a good night's rest after a long day. Your body needs rest too. A lot is going on behind the scenes. When we consume any food, we have lots of changes that occur in our blood. So the fat and the carbohydrate from the foods initiate a whole cascade of events that culminate in inflammation.

Now, typically our body can firefight against that inflammation. Late in the evening, our bodies are less effective at fighting against some of these unfavorable effects that otherwise we would be able to counterbalance. There are still a lot of unknowns about the impact that the time of day has on our body's ability to process food and fight the inflammation caused by these processes. This is what's super exciting with the research that we're doing, that for the first time we really hope that we can unravel some of these questions that are really fascinating for us to explore. That's right. As you know, the Big If study will be of a size that we've never seen before.

We'll get back to you in a few months with more news. So based on what we know so far, what's the main takeaway from all of this? If you want to snack, do snack, but think about the quality and the types of snacks that you're having. And if possible, to try and avoid really late night snacking. So it's thumbs down for late night snacking. Your cells and your digestive system need some time off.

The episode you just heard is part of a limited series to celebrate the launch of the Big If Study, the world's biggest clinical study to discover how intermittent fasting affects our mood, energy, and hunger. To take part for free and discover if intermittent fasting can work for you, simply go to joinzoe.com slash the big if, or via the link in the show notes. This episode was produced by Fascinate Productions with support from Yellow Hewings Martin and Alex Jones at Zoe. Zoe Dailies come out each day between now and our next regular episode.