Should Dinner Be the Smallest Meal of the Day?

Q: I’ve heard that it’s bad for dinner to be your biggest meal of the day. Is that true?

The maxim has been around for decades: “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.” It’s not bad advice, experts say. It’s also the opposite of how most people in the United States eat, with dinner often being the largest meal of the day.

Marta Garaulet, a professor of physiology at the University of Murcia in Spain, spends several months a year in the United States. She has noticed that many Americans are often so busy that they don’t have time to eat a substantial meal until the evening. It’s a striking contrast to eating habits in Spain (and other European countries), where lunch is typically the largest meal. A traditional dinner is light, consisting of something like vegetable or fish soup, a slice of bread with cheese, and a salad.

Scientists are still untangling how meal size and timing might affect health. But they do know one thing: It’s probably best to avoid making dinner your largest meal, Dr. Garaulet said.

Why Meal Size and Timing Matter

For decades, nutrition researchers have focused on what — not when — people eat, so we don’t have many large or long-term studies on the influence of meal timing on health, said Nour Makarem, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

But, she said, the studies that do exist show some consistent links. People who consume a greater percentage of calories in the evening tend to be at higher risk for obesity, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and higher levels of inflammation.

Your body’s internal clock, which regulates how your cells function, may be at least partly to blame, said Frank A.J.L. Scheer, the director of the medical chronobiology program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

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