Sue Shapses of Rutgers University said a Rutgers University nutrition and cognitive study found older women who ate within a nine-hour window did better on some cognitive tests after six months. The pilot study, presented at Nutrition 2026, compared that schedule with eating over about 12 hours.
The trial followed 47 women aged 50 to 79 living with overweight or obesity. All were encouraged to cut 500 calories a day for six months, and 26 were told to eat only between 10am and 6pm and to avoid food for four hours before bed.
Sue Shapses at Rutgers University
Shapses, a nutritional scientist at Rutgers University, said the effects were “modest” and suggested possible “additional benefits” for people who do not eat outside an eight to nine-hour window and stop eating four hours before going to sleep. She said the results suggested time-restricted eating may improve people’s ability to remember information for everyday tasks and reduce mistakes linked to memory, attention and problem solving.
At the end of the trial, both groups had similar weight loss averaging about 7kg, or 15lbs. The women who ate in the narrow window performed better on spatial planning and problem solving tests, and there were hints that they made fewer errors on memory and learning tests.
Wendy Hall on time-restricted eating
Wendy Hall, head of nutritional sciences at King’s College London, said, “Time-restricted eating is a plausible approach to supporting cognitive health in midlife and older adults with overweight,” adding another named researcher’s view to the findings presented at the American Society for Nutrition in Maryland.
Both groups performed the same on some multitasking and reaction time tests, so the result was not a broad across-the-board gain. The researchers plan to investigate why when people eat may matter as well as what they eat, and the study leaves one practical question for older adults with overweight or obesity: whether the same eating schedule would hold up in larger groups.
