Here's one more study on time-restricted feeding. This one shows that controlled feeding windows benefit the liver.
What's interesting about this article is the associated commentary. The author states:
"Panda, for one, has stopped eating between 8 pm and 8 am and says he feels great. "I even lost weight, although I eat whatever I want during the day," he says."
How is eating from 8 am to 8 pm a restricted feeding window?? What sort of schedule was he eating on before – eating from dawn until midnight??
I haven't regularly eaten past 8 pm in many, many years. I usually don't eat past 7 pm, but as of late I've been stopping at 6 pm as an experiment.
I wasn't able to find any hard data, but I would have to imagine that feeding windows back in the early 1900s had to be smaller than today. If someone is eating all day and all evening, there is little time for digestion or burning bodyfat.
I would have to think that an extended-time eating pattern has been a contributer to the obesity epidemic.
I have to say it’s very difficult for me not to eat quite late. I get off work at 5:30, and don’t get home til close to 6:30. Then I have to cook. So if I start cooking as soon as I get home, I can optimistically be eating at 7pm. If I’m so tired that I wait first, it’s later. If I’m doing anything social after work, I won’t be at the friends’ house or other place until 7 or 7:30 and we won’t be eating until 8:00 or 9:00. I have a group of friends that regularly gets together on Tuesdays for a big group meal, but because we don’t start cooking until everyone assembles around 7:30 or so, we’re invariably just tucking in to our meal at 8:30 or 9:00. I try to set a firm limit for myself to finish eating by 9pm each day, but I have to make an exception on Tuesdays.
Blame the light bulb for lengthening our days.