Why Your Random Eating Schedule Is Risky for Your Health

不规律饮食为何会危害健康

Research suggests the timing of your meals may affect your weight, cholesterol, and insulin levels.

研究表明就餐时间可以影响你的体重、胆固醇以及胰岛素水平。

Do you ever postpone dinner because you’re in the middle of a project? Or skip breakfast because you overslept? As long as you avoid binging later on, it’s no big deal, right?

你是否曾经因为在做一个项目而推迟了晚饭时间?又或者因为睡过头没吃早饭?只要避免稍后暴饮暴食，这就没什么大不了的，对吧?

Well, maybe not.

好吧，可能并非如此。

Two new papers published in the Proceedings of the Nutrition Society suggest that it’s not just what you eat, but when you eat that affects your health. Having irregular meals may set you up for obesity, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes—regardless of how many total calories you’re consuming.

《营养协会学报》上发表的两篇新的论文显示，不仅吃什么会影响你的健康，什么时间吃也同样会产生影响。无论摄入多少卡路里，不规则的饮食都可能会导致发胖、高血压以及二型糖尿病。

One of the reviews examined international eating patterns and found a possible link between obesity and eating more calories in the evening. The other paper concluded that people who consistently ate six meals a day had better cholesterol and insulin levels than those who ate meals with variable frequency—in this case, anywhere from three to nine meals a day.

其中一篇文章调查了国际饮食习惯，并发现肥胖和晚上摄入更多卡路里之间可能存在联系。另一篇论文总结称，长期每天吃六顿饭的人比那些吃饭频率经常变化的人拥有更好的胆固醇和胰岛素水平——这一规律适用于所有每天吃三到九顿饭的人。

“We found that adults consuming calories during regular meals—at similar times from one day to [the] next—were less obese than people who have irregular meals, despite consuming more calories overall,” says Gerda Pot, PhD, a visiting lecturer in the Diabetes and Nutritional Sciences Division at King’s College London who worked on both papers.

“我们发现，那些定期吃饭的成年人吸收的卡路里——第一天和第二天时间类似，没有那些不规律饮食的人胖，即使总得来说他们摄入了更多的卡路里，” Gerda Pot博士说到。Gerda Pot博士是伦敦大学国王学院糖尿病和营养科学部的客座讲师，他同时参与了这两篇论文。

Really? While it doesn't seem to make sense that meal timing could affect your health that much, the studies are part of an emerging field called chrononutrition, in which researchers are exploring the link between metabolism and circadian rhythms.

真的?吃饭时间会对健康产生如此大的影响看起来似乎并不太可能，不过该研究是一个新兴领域——寿命营养学的一部分，做该研究的研究人员正在探索新陈代谢和生理节律之间的联系。

Many metabolic processes in the body—such as appetite, digestion, and the metabolism of fat, cholesterol, and glucose—follow patterns that repeat every 24 hours, explains Pot. “Eating inconsistently may affect our internal body clock,” she says. And that disruption might lead to weight gain and other health risks.

身体的许多代谢过程例如胃口、消化以及脂肪、胆固醇和葡萄糖的新陈代谢，跟随一定模式每24小时重复一次，Pot如是解释。她说：“不规律的就餐会影响我们身体内部的生物钟。”生物钟的打乱可能导致体重增加以及其他健康风险。

But just how significant is the effect of varying your meal times?

但是总是变换吃饭时间到底有多大影响呢?

“This is a really important and valid question which we unfortunately cannot answer yet,” says Pot. “It would be of great interest to fully understand how much impact disruptions in our circadian rhythms could have on [our] obesity risk.”

Pot说:“这是一个非常重要并且有意义的问题，但不幸的是我们还无法回答。我们有极大的兴趣去完全理解打乱的生物节律对我们肥胖风险的影响有多大。”

So for now, it seems like a good idea to eat at the same times every day if you can. But if you can't, there are plenty of other ways to stay healthy, too.

目前来看，能在每天的同一时间吃饭似乎是个不错的主意。但是如果做不到这一点，同样也有很多其他的方法来保持健康。

http://www.health.com/weight-loss/meal-timing-weight-gain