SE5

Burning the Midnight Oil: Bad for Our Health?

This past weekend I recorded every food that I ate. When I looked back on the foods that I ate, I noticed a recurring pattern in my eating habits; a large portion of the food that I ate was consumed late at night, and very little of it was eaten in the morning. During my examination of many other classmates’ food logs I was able to see that this was not an isolated phenomenon. Several of my classmates ate substantial amounts of food much later than the average person. While this may seem odd for the average person this is actually what I had expected the results to be. I spend most of my weekend nights roaming the streets in search of places that seem to be a good time and while I’m out I see large numbers of other college students. However, I couldn’t help but wonder: if so many young people are eating food at night does this affect their health in any way?

                Ruth H. Striegel-Moore, a professor of psychology at Wesleyan University, and her associates set to determine many of aspects of the way that night eating affects health. Their study included interviewing 8,250 participants between the ages of 15 and 39 about the foods that they had eaten in the previous 24 hours as well as some of their background health and behavioral information, and then using this information to draw conclusions about the effects of night eating on things such as obesity, poor nutrition, and depression. They used the information gathered to place the participants into two groups: night eaters and non-night eaters. They defined a night eater as one who ate more than 50% of their calories after 7 pm or ate anything after 11 pm. They were able to divide the night eaters into four subgroups: nondepressed late night eaters, nondepressed evening eaters, depressed late night eaters, and depressed evening eaters.

                In their study there was a reasonably large amount of people that were classified as night eaters, approximately 25% of all participants. Striegel-Moore and her associates were able to make distinct connections from the differences between night eaters and non-night eaters. For example, night eaters are more likely to be non-Hispanic black men than non-night eaters and are on average younger as well. According to their data night eaters are more likely to use marijuana or crack/cocaine than non-night eaters. However, they found that this connection to drugs is more related to depression than night eating. The most significant evidence to show that night eating is less healthy is in the nutritional differences between night eaters and non-night eaters. Night eaters, on average, consume 300 more calories than non-night eaters. The diets of night eaters also included 300 mg more sodium and slightly less protein than non-night eaters. The late night eaters had even higher amounts of calories and sodium and less protein than evening night eaters. Although night eaters on average have less nutritious diets than non-night eaters; they do not, according to the data, have a higher occurrence of obesity. It was also found that sleep disturbance was more closely related to depression rather than night eating.

                As a traditional American college student, I love the lifestyle of staying up late and sleeping in. This sleeping pattern of staying up late causes me to eat a large amount of my daily calories late at night. It is not unusual to find me and many other college students enjoying delicious Middle Eastern food at Jerusalems at times as late 3 a.m. The problem with me and many of my college peers is that we often do not think about the health consequences of eating late at night. In their article in the International Journal of Eating Disorders Dr. Ruth Striegel-Moore and her associates compare the health habits of young adults who eat at night and those who do not through the interviewing of thousands of subjects. They were able to determine that there truly are some nutritional concerns associated with night eating. This means that this trend of night eating could be detrimental to our health if we continue on our present course.

Works Cited

Striegel-Moore, R. H., Franko, D. L., Thompson, D., Affenito, S., May, A. and Kraemer, H. C. (2008), Exploring the typology of night eating syndrome. Int. J. Eat. Disord., 41: 411–418. doi: 10.1002/eat.20514