It Makes a Difference When You Eat, And For How Long

New research findings at the Salk Institute suggest that obesity and metabolic diseases can be avoided by restricting food consumption to a 10-hour window, like 8am to 6pm, and fasting the other 14 hours.

"For many of us, the day begins with a cup of coffee first thing in the morning and ends with a bedtime snack 14 or 15 hours later," says Satchidananda Panda, a professor in Salk's Regulatory Biology Laboratory. "But restricting food intake to 10 hours a day, and fasting the rest, can lead to better health, regardless of our biological clock."

The research, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, suggests that the health problems associated with disruptions to animals' 24-hour rhythms of activity and rest, which in humans is linked to eating for most of the day or doing shift work, can be corrected by eating all calories within a 10-hour window.

Eating all food within 10 hours can restore balance, stave off metabolic diseases and maintain health, according to the researchers, who plan to study whether eating within 8-10 hours can prevent or reverse many diseases of aging. They have an app available which allows people anywhere in the world to get guidance on how to adopt an optimum daily eating/fasting cycle. By collecting daily eating and health status data from thousands of people, they hope to gain a better understanding of how the cycle sustains health.

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Artwork: Eating

Domesticated Eggplants are Asian

Historical documents and genetic data have shown that the eggplant was first domesticated in Asia, but most of its wild relatives are from Africa.

Researchers from the Natural History Museum of London and the Finnish museum of natural history, University of Helsinki, have sequenced the plastomes of the eggplant and of 22 species directly related to the eggplant.

"Nearly all species of the group of the eggplant inhabit low land savanahs and more or less arid habitats; some species are very widespread across Africa. Our results suggest that there had been a dramatic expansion of the distribution range of the group over the last two million years," says the first author of the paper, Xavier Aubriot.

The researchers found that relatives of the eggplant originated in northeastern Africa some two million years ago. Plants then dispersed both eastwards to tropical Asia and southwards to southern and western Africa. In tropical Asia, the dispersal event gave rise to a species that scientists call Solanum insanum. It is from populations of this wild species that the modern eggplant was later domesticated.

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Artwork: Nadia Eggplant