While it has long been recognized that what is consumed impacts on energy intake and health, it has recently been acknowledged that when consumption occurs may influence energy intake and health. Temporal pattern of eating refers to the timing, frequency, regularity, and size of eating occasions across a 24-hr period. This new area of research is often called “chrono-nutrition.” While extremes in temporal pattern of eating, such as shift workers who eat during the night, have long been known to increase risk of disease, the temporal pattern of eating during the day is also now believed to play an important role in health given its potential interaction with circadian rhythms, cardiometabolic hormones, and metabolism. These recent research findings have spurred subsequent research for enhancing methods for assessing and quantifying temporal pattern of eating, conducting mechanistic studies to better understand how temporal patterns of eating influence cardiometabolic hormones and metabolism, and developing and testing differing strategies to alter the temporal pattern of eating to improve health, particularly in regards to improving weight management.
In humans, a temporal pattern of eating across several days in the form of intermittent or alternate day fasting has been examined for over a decade, but in the last five years, research has begun to examine the diurnal temporal pattern of eating. Concepts such as time-restricted feeding, where eating is limited within a window of time (i.e., 12 hours: 7 am to 7 pm), and temporal distribution of energy intake, where guidelines regarding when the largest amount of energy intake should occur during the day (i.e., by mid-day), are now being examined to better understand how these temporal eating patterns influence intake and health. Given that the temporal pattern of eating has cultural and social influences, and that potentially the physiological influences of circadian rhythms may impact the temporal pattern of eating, this special issue aims to show the latest advances on the role of temporal pattern of eating on energy intake, cardiometabolic health, and weight.
To this aim, manuscript on the following themes would be contemplated:
- Examining the role of temporal pattern of eating on energy intake and health
- Potential mechanisms of action regarding temporal pattern of eating and health
- Methods to assess temporal pattern of eating
- Differing ways to implement temporal pattern of eating prescriptions