Diet timing and chronic disease: epidemiological evidence of chrono-nutrition
Studies on the impact of when we eat on metabolic health, also called chrono-nutrition, are on the rise in the past few years. Chrono-nutrition is very relevant as our temporal dietary patterns are changing. Changes in temporal eating patterns could be due to a rise in people working in shifts, people consuming more meals outside the home and overall eating patterns having become more irregular, including more breakfast skipping and night-time eating. Temporal eating patterns are a possible modifiable risk factor for cardio-metabolic diseases. Many of the metabolic processes in our body follow a 24-hour pattern, also called a circadian pattern. Disruption of these circadian patterns or misalignment between the timing of eating and endogenous circadian systems can have adverse health effects, including impaired cardio-metabolic health. This presentation will report on findings and insights on epidemiological evidence of meal timing on cardio-metabolic health, including type 2 diabetes and time-restricted eating.
The IANE webinars are held in partnership with the BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health and are accredited by the Royal Society of Biology for 9 CPD credits.
Dr Gerda Pot is a nutritional epidemiologist with a keen interest in chrono-nutrition and its potential implications for chronic diseases like cardio-metabolic diseases. She was one of the first nutritional epidemiologist to study when we eat in addition to what we eat. She has co-authored numerous scientific publications and reviews highlighting the importance of timing of eating and sleep in health. In 2023, she also published a book ‘The Rhythm of eating’ (In Dutch).
Dr Pot obtained her PhD from Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and developed her interest in chrono-nutrition at the MRC Human Nutrition Research, Cambridge. During her time in Cambridge, Dr Pot developed a score to measure meal irregularity and associated this with metabolic syndrome risk in the 1946 British Birth Cohort, one of the world’s longest running nutrition and health cohorts. Since 2013, she works at King’s College London where she extended her research on chrono-nutrition with sleep research. In 2015, she moved back to the Netherlands and continues her work at King’s College London as a visiting lecturer. In the Netherlands, she works for the Nutrition & Healthcare Alliance, the expert centre of integrating nutrition in healthcare.
