Journal Article

Meal timing trajectories in older adults and their associations with morbidity, genetic profiles, and mortality

Dashti, Hassan S., Maharani, Asri, Payton, Antony, Didikoglu, Altug, Liu, Chloe, Deng, Hao, Sharma, Anushka

2025

Overview

Background Older adults are vulnerable to mistimed food intake due to health and environmental changes; characterizing meal timing may inform strategies to promote healthy aging. We investigated longitudinal trajectories of self-reported meal timing in older adults and their associations with morbidity, genetic profiles, and all-cause mortality. Methods We analyzed data from 2945 community-dwelling older adults from the University of Manchester Longitudinal Study of Cognition in Normal Healthy Old Age, with up to five repeated assessments of meal timing and health behaviors conducted between 1983 and 2017. Linear mixed-effects models, latent class analysis, and Cox regression were used to examine relationships between meal timing with illness and behavioral factors, genetic scores for chronotype and obesity, and mortality. Results Here we show older age is associated with later breakfast and dinner times, a later eating midpoint, and a shorter daily eating window. Physical and psychological illnesses, including fatigue, oral health problems, depression, anxiety, and multimorbidity, are primarily associated with later breakfast. Genetic profiles related to an evening chronotype, but not obesity, are linked to later meals. Later breakfast timing is also associated with increased mortality. Latent class analysis of meal timing trajectories identify early and late eating groups, with 10-year survival rates of 86.7% in the late eating group compared to 89.5% in the early eating group. Conclusions Meal timing, particularly later breakfast, shifts with age and may reflect broader health changes in older adults, with implications for morbidity and longevity. Plain language summary As people get older, changes in health and daily routines can affect when they eat their meals. This study followed nearly 3000 older adults in the UK over several decades to understand how meal timing changes with age and how it relates to health and longevity. Participants reported the times they ate meals and completed health and lifestyle surveys across multiple years. We found that as people aged, they tended to eat breakfast and dinner later, and those with more health problems or a genetic tendency to stay up late also tended to eat later. Importantly, eating breakfast later with aging was linked to a higher risk of death. Our findings suggest that later meal timing, especially breakfast, could serve as a simple marker of health in older adults and may guide future strategies for healthy aging. Dashti et al. characterize whether meal timing changes with age in older adults using longitudinal data from nearly 3000 individuals. They link later breakfast timing with increased multimorbidity and higher mortality risk and reveal behavioral and genetic factors that influence meal timing during aging.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Springer Nature B.V,Nature Portfolio
• Subject: 45/43 / 692/1807 / 692/699 / Aging / Biobanks / Body mass index / Circadian rhythm / Cognition & reasoning / Comorbidity / Genomes / Longitudinal studies / Meals / Medicine / Medicine & Public Health / Metabolism / Morbidity / Mortality / Nutrition research / Older people / Questionnaires / Shift work / Sleep / Sociodemographics