Why breakfast timing may be a simple marker of healthy aging

By Dr. Priyom Bose, Ph.D.Reviewed by Lauren HardakerSep 9 2025

A decades-long UK study reveals that later breakfasts in older adults are tied to poorer health and shorter survival, making meal timing a simple yet powerful marker of aging well.

Study: Meal timing trajectories in older adults and their associations with morbidity, genetic profiles, and mortality. Image credit: Lizelle Lotter/Shutterstock.com

A recent study in Communications Medicine analyzed patterns of self-reported meal timing in the older population. It assessed its associations with morbidity, genetic profiles, and all-cause mortality.

The effect of chrononutrition on health

Chrononutrition is the study of the timing of eating, which has emerged as a modifiable risk factor for adverse health outcomes. Numerous animal and human studies have demonstrated the importance of proper meal timing for achieving better health benefits. A recent rodent-based research has indicated that consuming high-fat meals during atypical periods (i.e., inactive phases), compared to the typical active phase, leads to greater fat mass accumulation.

Late eating has been linked to metabolic changes that promote body fat accumulation and raise body mass index (BMI). Because meal timings signal the body’s internal clocks in metabolic tissues, shifting eating schedules can disrupt circadian rhythms and create internal misalignment.

Although late eating among night shift workers has been found to increase the risk of disease, few studies have assessed the effect of chrononutrition in older adults. Typically, older adults are susceptible to mistimed food consumption due to multimorbidity and behavioral changes associated with aging. The primary factors influencing meal timing are chronotype, medication use, genetics, and sleep disorders. A carefully designed meal timing could support healthy aging.

About the study

The current study performed longitudinal analysis using data from the University of Manchester Longitudinal Study of Cognition in Normal Healthy Old Age (UMLCHA) cohort to investigate whether meal timings influence health in the older population.

UMLCHA recruited 6,375 individuals aged between 42 and 94 from Newcastle and Manchester, UK, from 1983 to 1993. All participants were followed till 2017. Participants provided information about their health status, lifestyle, and sociodemographic information through questionnaires. A subset of participants also provided blood samples between 1999 and 2004.

In a cohort-specific survey, participants were asked to complete the Personal Details Questionnaire, in which they provided information about their meal and sleep habits, marital status, smoking habits, occupation, alcohol consumption, and health. They were subjected to the questionnaire at five time points, including baseline (1983), second administration (between 1984 and 1996), third administration (between 2001 and 2003), fourth administration (2007), and final/fifth administration (2010).

Linear mixed-effects models were used to assess the changes in meal timing variables with age. Model 1 was adjusted for sex as a time-independent variable. In contrast, Model 2 included additional time-independent variables (e.g., socioeconomic status and education level) and time-dependent variables (e.g., smoking status, marital status, employment status, and sleep duration).

Study findings

A total of 2,945 community-dwelling older adults were included. The mean age of the participants at baseline was 64 years, 71.5% were female, and 83.3% were unemployed. According to the questionnaire, the average breakfast, lunch, and dinner times were 8:22 AM, 12:38 PM, and 5:51 PM, respectively.

In general, participants had their breakfast 31 minutes after waking up and had dinner 5.38 hours before going to bed. Model 1 associated older age with later timing for breakfast. Each additional decade of aging was associated with a delay in breakfast by 7.94 minutes.

Model 2 revealed that each additional decade was associated with a breakfast delay of 2.89 minutes. An increasing age was also associated with a later midpoint of eating, shorter intervals from dinner to bed, and a shorter daily eating window. Latent class analysis of meal timing trajectories highlighted variability in age-related changes in meal timing among older adults.

A two-cluster model was found to be more promising for capturing the distinct patterns of meal timing. This model indicated significant differences in meal timing trajectories. For instance, early eating subgroups had consistently exhibited earlier mealtimes with aging, whereas the late eating subgroup exhibited later mealtimes with aging. Ten-year survival rates were 89.5% in the early group versus 86.7% in the late eating group.

The Cornell Medical Index (CMI) revealed a significant association between meal timings and physical and psychological illness symptoms. Later breakfast timing and a shorter daily eating window were associated with fatigue. In addition, oral health problems were linked to earlier dinner timing and a shorter daily eating window. Participants with a later breakfast timing, a shorter eating window, and a later eating midpoint were more susceptible to hypochondria and multimorbidity, depression, and anxiety.

Linear mixed-effects models revealed that longer meal preparation times were associated with a later dinner, a later eating midpoint, and a longer interval between waking up and breakfast. Confirmatory analyses revealed an association between polygenic scores for evening chronotype with later sleep midpoint and obesity with higher BMI. However, obesity-linked variants did not predict meal timing, whereas evening chronotype variants were associated with later meals.

A mixed-effects Cox regression model revealed that each additional hour of later breakfast timing was linked with a 1.11 increase in odds of mortality in model 1, and a 1.08 increase in model 2. No significant mortality associations were found for lunch or dinner timings.

Conclusions

The current study emphasized the importance of meal timings in the older population. A delay in breakfast timing was associated with multimorbidity, increased physical and psychological illness, evening chronotype genetic profiles, and a higher mortality risk.

The authors stress that this is an observational study, so illness may drive later meal timing rather than the other way around. Therefore, proper meal timings must be encouraged to promote healthy aging, with breakfast timing emerging as a particularly important marker.

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