Older adults do not just change what they eat, they often change when they eat. A new study tracked 2,945 people for more than 20 years and found that breakfast and dinner gradually shifted later with age. It also showed that later breakfast timing was tied to a small uptick in the risk of death.

Meal timing is not a niche topic for lab scientists. It sits at the crossroads of daily routine, sleep, and wider health. This makes it relevant for families and clinicians who are trying to spot early warning signs.

The research was led by Dr. Hassan S. Dashti, a nutrition scientist and circadian biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, part of Mass General Brigham. His team looked beyond calories and nutrients to the clock on the wall.

Meals move later over decades

Participants were community-dwelling adults in Manchester and Newcastle in the United Kingdom, aged 42 to 94 at entry. They reported typical times for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and provided details on sleep, health symptoms, and daily routines across repeated assessments.

At baseline, average mealtimes were about 8:22 a.m., 12:38 p.m., and 5:51 p.m. The researchers modeled change over decades, then linked those trajectories to illness patterns, genetics, and mortality.

Breakfast and dinner crept later with age. The midpoint of eating shifted later as well, while the daily eating window narrowed.

Two patterns emerged. One group tended to keep earlier meals, and another tended to eat later. The late eaters showed a 10-year survival of 86.7 percent versus 89.5 percent for early eaters.

The circadian rhythm acts like a 24-hour program for hormones and metabolism, and human studies show that the same meal is handled differently in the morning than in the evening, with evening responses often less favorable.

Breakfast timing linked to health

Each hour of later breakfast carried a modest increase in the risk of death over follow-up, even after accounting for many other factors. Later breakfast was also linked to depression, fatigue, and oral health problems in the data.

“Our research suggests that changes in when older adults eat, especially the timing of breakfast, could serve as an easy to monitor marker of their overall health status,” said Dr. Dashti.

“Patients and clinicians can possibly use shifts in mealtime routines as an early warning sign to look into underlying physical and mental health issues.”

Genetic profiles related to an evening chronotype were tied to later breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That means people with a biological tendency to go to bed and wake up later also tended to eat later.

Practical barriers mattered too. Reporting difficulty preparing meals was associated with later breakfast and a shorter eating window, and worse sleep quality tracked with later meals. Together, these patterns suggest that both biology and daily life push the clock.

Late meals boost hunger, fat storage

When people eat late, the body’s metabolic settings may not be primed for handling glucose efficiently. Controlled laboratory work shows that evening timing alone can lower glucose tolerance because of the internal clock, independent of what you eat or how long you slept.

Other experiments demonstrate that a late but otherwise identical meal can increase hunger and reduce calories burned, while shifting molecular pathways toward fat storage.

This was an observational study, not a randomized trial, so it cannot prove that late breakfast causes earlier death. It can show that later breakfast aligns with more illness and slightly higher risk over time, which makes it a useful flag to watch.

Breakfast timing also fits with prior population work. Large cohorts in the United States have linked skipping breakfast to higher cardiovascular mortality, even after adjusting for many lifestyle factors.

Breakfast habits linked to survival

Meal skipping and very short intervals between meals have been associated with higher all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in national data. This suggests that regular, spaced eating may be part of the picture.

That does not negate the value of personalized schedules, but it does argue for caution in older adults.

Historical cohort work in older adults in the U.S. also noted that not regularly eating breakfast correlated with higher mortality over many years, which underscores that this signal is not new.

Breakfast timing and aging well

If an older adult begins drifting breakfast much later than usual, that change may coincide with fatigue, low mood, sleep problems, or oral discomfort. The timing shift may be easier to spot than a slow weight change or a subtle mood dip.

Consistency is the theme that emerges. In older adults, especially those with an evening chronotype, aiming for a steady morning meal time could support better alignment of eating with internal clocks, and it offers a simple metric to share with clinicians.

Trials that assign earlier or later breakfast times in older adults would help test causality. Studies that integrate food timing with sleep timing, medications, and oral health care could reveal which combination matters most.

For now, the timing signal is modest but measurable, and it is easy to track at home. That makes breakfast time a low effort part of the health conversation for aging well.

The study is published in the journal Communications Medicine.

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