Kenneth Glad
Meal timing is being examined as one possible influence on mental performance in later life. The evidence remains preliminary and comes from a small group of participants.
Women assigned to two different daily eating schedules lost nearly the same amount of weight during a six-month trial with both groups shedding about 7kg on average.
Despite the similar weight-loss results, the participants who ate within the shorter daily window performed better on selected tests of spatial planning and problem solving.
Prof Wendy Hall of King’s College London, who was not involved in the study, urged caution when interpreting the findings, writes The Guardian.
She said the full peer-reviewed paper would be needed to determine whether the reported differences were reliable, clinically meaningful and likely to have any practical effect on everyday cognitive function.
Results varied by test
The British newspaper reports that the Rutgers University-led trial included 47 women aged 50 to 79 who were living with overweight or obesity.
All participants were asked to reduce their daily energy intake by 500 calories. Twenty-six were advised to eat during a nine-hour period, usually between 10am and 6pm, while the others spread their meals across roughly 12 hours.
Both groups lost an average of about 7kg. However, the women on the shorter schedule recorded higher scores on tests of spatial planning and problem solving.
They also appeared to make fewer errors in some memory and learning tasks. No clear advantage emerged in several assessments of reaction time and multitasking.
Small studies need caution
Shapses told The Guardian that the effects were “modest” but could point to “additional benefits” beyond weight loss. The findings were presented at Nutrition 2026 in Maryland.
Conference studies with small samples can produce results that change when tested in larger and more varied populations. This trial involved women only, and the apparent advantage was limited to certain measures rather than cognition as a whole.
The research team is examining whether the body clock, metabolic changes and inflammatory activity may help explain the pattern.
Hall said avoiding large meals late in the evening may influence blood sugar regulation, vascular function and inflammation. Her comments referred more broadly to adults in midlife and later life, while the trial itself involved only women aged 50 to 79 living with overweight or obesity.
Source: The Guardian, Science Direct, Nutrition 2026
