Eating Late at Night Is Not a Good Idea. This Experiment Reveals Why

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Eating Late at Night Is Not a Good Idea. This Experiment Reveals 
Why 
It's long been popular advice for people looking to lose weight to avoid late 
night snacking. It's no wonder, with a host of research showing that late night 
eating is linked to greater body weight and increased risk of obesity. But until 
now, few studies have actually investigated precisely why late night eating is 
linked to greater body weight. This is what a recent US study set out to 
uncover. They found that eating four hours later than normal actually 
changed many of the physiological and molecular mechanisms that favor 
weight gain. 
This work adds to other recently published work which has found that eating 
earlier in the day is more beneficial for both appetite and body weight 
control. 
Late eating 
To conduct their study, the researchers had 16 participants follow two 
different meal schedules, each for a period of six days total. The first protocol 
had participants eat their meals early in the day with the last meal consumed 
approximately six hours and 40 minutes before bedtime. The second 
protocol had participants eat all of their daily meals approximately four 
hours later. This meant they skipped breakfast and instead had lunch, dinner 
and an evening meal. Their last meal was consumed only two and a half 
hours before sleep. 
The study was conducted in a controlled lab, which ensured the participants 
in each group consumed an identical diet, and that all of their meals were 
evenly spaced with around four hours between them. To understand how late 
eating affected the body, the researchers specifically looked at three different 
measures which are associated with weight gain: 

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1. The influence of appetite, 
2. The impact of eating time on energy expenditure (calories burned), and 
3. Molecular changes from fat tissue. 
Appetite was measured using two techniques. The first technique was having