Most of us don’t eat on the same schedule seven days a week. Workdays tend to keep us on a routine, but once the weekend rolls around, breakfast gets pushed back, lunch happens whenever, and dinner may be hours later than usual. It probably doesn’t seem like a big deal, but researchers have been looking at whether those shifts affect more than just our appetites. As it turns out, constantly changing when we eat may have a connection to the heart.
Eating Jetlag and the Heart
Researchers wanted to know whether changing the times we eat between weekdays and weekends might affect heart health. They call this difference in eating schedules “eating jetlag.” New research published in Communications Medicine suggests that going off schedule could increase the risk of heart disease, especially in men.
The study analyzed 104,806 adults in France who participated in the long-running NutriNet-Santé study between 2009 and 2023. The average age of participants was around 43, and 79% were women. They were followed for a median of 8.1 years. The focus wasn’t on what they ate, but when they ate. Subjects completed 24-hour food records that detailed when they ate or drank.
For example, someone might eat breakfast at 7 a.m. and finish dinner at 7 p.m. during the workweek, but sleep later and shift meals several hours later on Saturday and Sunday. The researchers were interested in the change in the overall eating schedule, rather than simply whether someone ate breakfast or dinner at a particular hour.
Participants were divided into three groups. The maintenance group kept its weekend eating schedule within about an hour of its weekday schedule. The advance group shifted its eating times more than an hour earlier on weekends, and the delay group ate more than an hour later.
Did it make a difference when eating schedules changed? The results showed that men who ate more than an hour earlier on weekends had a 44% higher relative risk of cardiovascular disease and a 68% higher relative risk of coronary heart disease compared with men who kept their meal schedules relatively consistent. Those who ate more than an hour later on weekends had a 36% higher relative risk of coronary disease. Women, however, were not affected by their eating schedules.
The Circadian Rhythm
Why would changing when we eat between weekdays and weekends have such an effect on the heart? Researchers believe it has to do with the circadian rhythm, our internal biological clocks. Food isn’t just fuel for the body; the timing of food intake also provides signals to the body’s internal clocks. Constantly moving eating times around could potentially disrupt those rhythms, which are involved in metabolism and cardiovascular health.
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“A few years ago, we suggested that eating late was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease,” says lead researcher Bernard Srour, Pharm.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., HDR. “This new study suggests that, beyond simply eating late, maintaining consistent mealtimes between weekdays and weekends may be just as important. These associations appear to be independent of how long people sleep, suggesting that regular mealtimes could, in themselves, help resynchronize our biological rhythm.”
This was an observational study, and it doesn’t prove that eating brunch instead of a 7 a.m. breakfast will cause heart disease. There is still a lot researchers don’t know about the connection between meal timing and heart disease, including why it affected men and not women. More research will be needed to determine just how much consistency matters and whether changing eating schedules can actually affect long-term health. For now, the study adds another piece to a much larger picture of how our daily routines may influence the heart.
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