Overview
- A longitudinal analysis of 2,945 UK adults followed for about 22 years found that each hour of later breakfast timing was associated with a modestly higher risk of death.
- Later breakfast consistently correlated with depression, fatigue, oral health problems and multimorbidity, whereas lunch and dinner timing showed no significant mortality link.
- With aging, participants tended to delay breakfast and dinner while narrowing their daily eating window, indicating shifting meal patterns over time.
- Polygenic scores for an evening chronotype were tied to later meals, suggesting biological influences on when older adults eat that were not explained by obesity-related genetics.
- Authors caution the study is observational and based on self-reported timing in a predominantly White UK cohort, and they call for randomized trials and objective monitoring to test whether earlier, consistent meal schedules improve outcomes.