When people skip breakfast, they end up eating most of their food at night, which makes their body worse at handling sugar and hurts their sleep.
Scientific Claim
Delayed meal timing, particularly consumption of the majority of daily calories in the evening, impairs glucose tolerance and disrupts sleep quality.
Original Statement
“And a lot of times when people skip breakfast, their meals get pushed into the evening time where they're eating a lot of meals later in the day or at least the bulk of their calories later in the day. This can make it so that you have metabolic slowdown and chronic caloric restriction. This can lead to impaired glucose tolerance. It leads to impaired sleep.”
Context Details
Domain
nutrition
Population
human
Subject
Delayed meal timing with majority of daily calories consumed in the evening
Action
impairs
Target
glucose tolerance and disrupts sleep quality
Intervention Details
Evidence from Studies
Supporting (2)
When people ate dinner at 10 PM instead of 6 PM, their blood sugar spiked higher and stayed up longer — proving eating late makes your body worse at handling sugar.
Technical explanation
This study directly compares late eating (22:00) vs. early eating (18:00) and finds worse glucose and insulin responses after late meals, explicitly testing the assertion’s core claim and attributing it to circadian misalignment — not just sleep timing.
When pregnant women with diabetes eat later at night, their blood sugar stays high overnight, which makes it harder for their bodies to stay healthy — this shows eating late is bad for blood sugar control.
Technical explanation
This study directly compares early vs. late meal timing in pregnant women with GDM and finds that later eating leads to higher overnight glucose levels, directly supporting the assertion that delayed meal timing impairs glucose tolerance. It also implies sleep disruption due to metabolic stress, though sleep quality is not directly measured.
Contradicting (2)
Association of Skipping Breakfast with Metabolic Syndrome and Its Components: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies
This study says skipping breakfast is bad for blood sugar, but it doesn’t say anything about eating late at night or how that affects sleep or glucose tolerance.
People who ate all their meals between noon and 8 PM didn’t sleep worse than others — so eating late doesn’t necessarily ruin your sleep.
Technical explanation
This study tests time-restricted eating with meals confined to 12:00–8:00 PM (i.e., late eating window) and finds no negative effect on sleep quality, directly contradicting the assertion that evening calorie consumption disrupts sleep.