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Late breakfast
All writing is autobiographical, they say, and here’s the proof.
Because I originally wrote this at 11 a.m. on a Saturday after eating a late breakfast. And, the study we’re exploring today is partly about what happens to men who eat late breakfasts on the weekend.
Writing in the journal Communications Medicine, researchers in France say they analyzed data from 104,806 adults in the NutriNet-Santé cohort. They focused on the association between cardiovascular disease and what they call “eating jetlag.”
That’s their term for the difference between the midpoint of a person’s daily eating window on weekdays and weekends.
The findings:
For men, for each hour of eating jetlag, their risk of cardiovascular disease went up 14%, and their risk of coronary heart disease went up 21%. This applied whether their eating midpoint shifted earlier or later on weekends.
But for women? The researchers detected no statistically significant association with cardiovascular or coronary heart disease.
We’d be stacking theories on top of each other to explain why associations might be different in men and women.
But the researchers theorize that it might have to do with different physiology.
Or else, “differences in lifestyle and socio-occupational circumstances … could lead to different circadian rhythms.”
Also, men have higher absolute risk of cardiovascular disease to begin with.
The data came from NutriNet-Santé. This is an ongoing French health and nutrition study coordinated by researchers from INRAE, Inserm, CNAM, and several French universities.
“This new study,” said Bernard Srour, research director at INRAE, “suggests that, beyond simply eating late, maintaining consistent meal times between weekdays and weekends may be just as important. These associations appear to be independent of how long people sleep, suggesting that regular meal times could, in themselves, help resynchronise our biological rhythm.”
Key limitation: “We assumed that Monday to Friday corresponded to working days, and Saturday and Sunday to rest days.”
However, I’m going to add another limitation.
The researchers recorded what participants ate and adjusted for calorie intake and overall diet quality. But they do not appear to have isolated how an individual’s weekend meals differed from his or her weekday meals.
For example, my late breakfast that day consisted of pancakes (made by my daughter) and bacon; my weekday breakfasts are quite different: most often two eggs and a protein shake.
For that matter, I also don’t usually follow my weekday breakfast by writing with the Premier League on TV in the background.
This was an observational study, so it cannot establish that changing meal times causes heart disease.
In any event, this is the classic “we need further study” kind of study.
And I’m fine with that.
I’m happy to sleep in, eat a big breakfast, and watch soccer while writing for as many weekends as necessary.
All in the interest of science, of course.
Other things worth knowing …
WSJ: British authorities said they were releasing five men on bail who were arrested over a foiled attack on an air base in England that houses U.S. forces. Officials familiar with the matter said earlier that investigators were probing whether Iran or an Islamist group had orchestrated the plot.
CBS News: Soaring diesel prices are rippling through the U.S. economy, putting a financial squeeze on schools, farmers and small businesses. Average diesel prices hovered around $6.50 a gallon on Friday. One Georgia food bank said it will spend an extra $100,000 this year on diesel, money that otherwise would have gone to feed families. “That would actually translate to about 122,000 meals,” said the Atlanta Community Food Bank.
The Atlantic: The United States is deporting parents without their children, creating a whole new family-separation crisis.
ABC News: Prosecutors in central New York say they are reopening the investigation of an alleged gang rape at a Cornell University fraternity in 2024 after a civil lawsuit filed earlier this month sparked outrage. The lawsuit alleges a former student was drugged, assaulted, and gang raped by seven former and current members of the Chi Phi fraternity.
CBS News: Food safety becomes an election issue as major outbreaks and recalls cause concern.
Fox News: Bill Gates warns artificial intelligence is “powerful enough” to cause “a billion deaths” if unchecked.
WSJ: Every household in Hazle Township, Pennsylvania receives $10,000 if a data center gets built nearby — and many residents are pushing back anyway, despite the lure of the cash payout.
Thanks for reading. Photo by Natalia Gusakova on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this at Inc.com. See you in the comments!