A landmark study aims to unlock the secret eating habits of office workers and the impact constant eating while sat down doing not much at all can have on your health.
Researchers at the Mary MacKillop Institute for Health and Research at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne want to know how we burn energy from food throughout the day, and, specifically, the risk of getting type 2 diabetes.
Lead researcher Dr Evelynn Parr said while there had been studies saying sitting down for too long is bad for your health, nobody has really looked at how energy from food is distributed throughout the day, and how that affects blood sugar levels.
Dr Parr and leading sports scientist Professor John Hawley – who’s everywhere at the moment with the ‘fit in six minutes’ craze – suspect there might be some interesting findings about the timing of when we eat sat at work all day more so than the volume consumed.
“The interaction between diet and activity patterns throughout a day are poorly understood,” Dr Parr said. “Our study will look at the timing of nutrient intake and whether that can alleviate some of the deleterious effects of prolonged sitting.”
“We’re going to be using state of the art technology to measure blood glucose throughout the day and when people are asleep to see if there any benefits of eating more food earlier in the day and, say, less at night,” Dr Parr said.
The study is seeking Melbourne-based men and women aged between 45-65 years, who are overweight or obese, pre-diabetic and live a sedentary lifestyle – i.e. prolonged periods of sitting. Register for the study here.