A longevity expert on when to actually eat dinner

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP, is ready to settle the debate once and for all: When is the best time to eat dinner? “It’s definitely not 9 p.m.,” jokes the CEO of nutrition tech company L-Nutra after we chat about our shared Arab heritage and that culture’s love of late-night dining .

“When you eat late at night, your body doesn’t fully rest while you sleep,” says Dr. Antoun. “You may not notice it, but your digestive system is working and you’re not going into REM sleep. Eating late at night means you might have micro-awakenings due to things like acid reflux. And when you don’t sleep well, you don’t achieve a very important longevity indicator.

So when it comes to dinner, Dr. Antoun says the sooner the better, with one important caveat: You want to have a 12-hour gap between your last bite of the evening and your first bite breakfast the next day. This practice is a form of intermittent fasting called “initial intermittent fasting,” in which most of your calories are consumed during the day or early in the day, gradually decreasing around bedtime.

“When we surveyed centenarians, one of the most common things we found was not that they ate healthily, but rather that they ate dinner early,” says Dr. Antoun. They don’t go out late and have dinner or drinks late at night. The next day, they still eat breakfast, but there is a 12-hour gap between their meals – whether intentional or not, that’s 12 hours of intermittent fasting. And for anyone who’s ever tried fasting, it’s much easier to do when you’re dreaming.

Dr. Antoun is full of other fantastic longevity advice, including this gem I’m quite guilty of: “Don’t skip breakfast, it’s the worst thing you can do.”