Love that weekend brunch? Sorry, it’s bad for your waist

IT’S a treat many of us look forward to at the weekend – having a lie-in then tucking into a late breakfast close to normal lunchtime.

But now a study has linked the brunch habit with putting on up to 11lbs (5kg) in weight.

It suggests people who have weekend breakfast later than they do during the working week suffer ‘eating jet lag’. The study of more than 1,000 people aged 18 to 25 showed those who pushed back their breakfast by more than three-and-a-half hours had a higher body mass index (BMI).

Their BMI was 1.34 points higher than the study average – making them up to 11lbs heavier.

The group included millennials, famous for brunching on smashed avocado on toast.

The 1,000 participants had breakfast an average of two hours later than during the week. The study worked out their ‘jet lag’, based on how much later their meals fell at weekends. The Barcelona University report suggests altering mealtimes at the weekend could confuse the body clock and alter metabolism or appetite.

Study author Maria Fernanda Zeron-Rugerio said: ‘We need to think about brunch more and about our habits at the weekend when we tend to eat and sleep later. We have metabolic processes which are primed to expect and react to meals at a certain time based on when we usually eat them. This is like a miniature effect of the type seen in shift workers, who have erratic mealtimes and have been shown to put on weight.’

The study, published in the journal Nutrients, found that on average the participants had breakfast two hours later at weekends, but lunch only 54 minutes later and dinner half an hour later.

Researchers were able to work out eating ‘jet lag’ using the middle point between the first and last meals of the day, then comparing that to the figure for during the week. People with ‘jet lag’ of more than three-and-a-half hours had a BMI 1.34 points higher than the study group average – even when age, physical activity, diet quality and sleep duration were taken into account.

Some experts believe eating late disrupts the body clock, altering the cycle of hormones which regulate appetite so that people feel hungrier and eat more. However, Professor John Mathers, of the Human Nutrition Research Centre at the UK’s Newcastle University, was sceptical of the study.

He said of the weight difference: ‘It is impossible to determine whether this is due to the different eating patterns. It might be due to other lifestyle factors entirely.’