How late should your dinner be?

For the majority of the people, eating a late dinner is just one of those things. They seem to have taken it for granted that since it’s dinner anyway, it could be eaten anytime after dark! And that’s why many people eat dinner as late as 10pm or 11pm for that matter.

Yet physicians warn that the later our dinner comes, the more danger we expose ourselves to when we try to sleep immediately afterwards. One of the reasons is that as the day wears on, the average person is less active, and any meal can send us to sleep immediately, especially as we are also bogged down by the concern for the next day.

Indeed, there have been cases where people actually regurgitate their (late) dinners through the nose, sometimes getting suffocated in the process.

Again, says the General Practitioner, Dr. Peace Asiodu, “Sleeping over a late dinner gives you heartburn, as your acidic stomach contents rises back up into your oesophagus. Apart from heartburn, you also risk other avoidable health concerns due to eating later dinner.”

This being the case, what is the appropriate time to have a crisis-free dinner? Asiodu provides the answer: “You can have your dinner anywhere from 6pm but ideally, not later than 8pm.”

Noting that even after dinner, anyone might still crave food, the physician advises eating fruits instead of any of the heavy foods such as cassava meals, amala, fufu, pounded yam, etc that we are wont to take for dinner.

But beyond this, what benefits are accruable to you when you make it a habit to eat your dinner before dark? Plenty, experts say.