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When given the same quantity of high-fat food, mice in the study that ate throughout the day and night became fat and sick, while mice whose eating was restricted to a period of eight hours remained healthy.
Researchers suspect that a period of fasting may boost the efficiency of organs involved in metabolism, allowing the body to better regulate blood sugar, fat storage and other measures. Each organ might also have its own clock that is programmed to work best during the hours when eating fits in to our circadian rhythms. Eating outside those rhythms, on the other hand, could set the body up for trouble.
"If you look at the nighttime view of the sky in NASA satellite pictures and then go back to the Gallup survey on diabetes and obesity, these two pictures overlap nicely, which means that the places that are lit up late into the night have higher incidences of diabetes and obesity," said Satchin Panda, a molecular biologist at the Salk Institute in San Diego.
"People are still stuck on calories in and calories out," he added. "What we are saying is that the body uses calories in during the day very differently from calories in at night."
