Bedtime snacks should be scrapped and children should eat nothing after supper, say obesity experts concerned that eating before going to sleep — and after three meals during the day — is fuelling Britain’s obesity crisis.
Dr Matt Capehorn, a clinical adviser to the National Obesity Forum, which is planning to launch a campaign on the issue, said: “What we have noticed over the last year or two is the amount of obese children that are having a bedtime snack . . . in addition to three other meals and snacks.”
Capehorn, a GP and clinical manager of the Rotherham Institute for Obesity, added: “No one needs to be filling their bodies with calories just before bedtime. From the point of view of digestion, you are better eating two to three hours before going to bed and not eating again.”
He said it was “daft” to eat anything just before bed, and even worse to have refined sugar.
“Even if it was healthy food, unless [children] have gone four to six hours since their last meal, they cannot physiologically be hungry,” Capehorn said. As a result, children were “having breakfast on top of a full stomach”.
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He added: “We are seeing children as young as three or four being led into a habit of having a bedtime snack.”
Tam Fry, chairman of the obesity forum, said: “You should not be eating just before you go to bed. You should really have your last meal of the day a minimum of two hours before you go to bed because, at that point, you have got enough time to digest it.”
Popular bedtime snacks include toast, cereal, crisps, biscuits, cheese and crackers, chocolate and fruit. Warm milk, hot chocolate and cocoa are also popular.
On Netmums, the parenting website, some mothers swear by late snacks. One mother wrote: “My DS [dear son] has tea about 6pm and supper at 7.30. Even if it’s just milk and a plain biscuit I wouldn’t send him to bed without something to eat! If he does go up without anything he doesn’t settle as quickly.”
Another noted: “My children stay settled for the night if they have something to eat. [They] love a bowl of hot noodles. After eating that they are out like a light.”
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However, one mother said her children, aged three and four, have supper at 5.45pm and, as they go to bed by 7pm, there is no need for anything else.
By the time they finish primary school, more than a third of pupils in England are overweight or obese.