Should You Follow Mom’s Nutrition Tips?

“Anything You Eat After 8 p.m. Turns Into Fat”

Bonci: There are a lot of countries in the world where people sit down to eat dinner at 10 p.m., and the people are not fat. Ultimately what’s important is your total calories, not when you eat them.

Ayoob: If you’re not going to use the energy from the food you eat right away, your body will turn it into fat or glycogen [stored carbohydrates]. But that’s true of what you eat any time of the day. Your body will access those stores and use them if it needs to.

Gans: If you ate all the calories your body required to maintain your weight by eight o’clock, then anything you eat after that will be excess and will turn into fat. Otherwise it won’t. The problem is, people often overeat later because they didn’t eat throughout the day. Or they graze out of habit or boredom. I tell them to adopt an earlier bedtime.