Why eat a sugary meal right before going to bed?
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Food high in sugar is nutritionally good for short burst energy, and if not used up, that energy is stored as fat. Since people generally go to sleep after meals are they not wasting this potential short-release energy yield?
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Let’s consider instead that we eat dessert specifically to put on fat. Well, this may have been desirable as an outcome historically, but for a long time - maybe 200 years or so - humans have NOT wanted to build fat. Also - it doesn’t work. We burn fat during sleep, so those ‘dessert gains’ disappear.
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Now let us visit the simplest answer of “it tastes good” - well in that case, why do we eat dessert when we do? We could eat sugary snack at any point of the day - a dessert-lunch might make a lot of sense! So let me repeat myself:
Why eat a sugary meal right before going to bed?
I think it’s more cultural as it’s not uniform globally. I don’t care much for dessert as a concept, but I love a piece of cold fruit, like an orange, strawberry or melon after dinner. I find it helps reset the mouth after a flavorful meal. And I’ll usually have a cup of tea with it.
Desserts seem to pair better with coffee or tea, and having those after a meal is a fairly common ritual. I wonder if we have dessert after dinner because we often have coffee or tea?