University of Guelph Distinguished Public Lecture

A distinguished public lecture connecting circadian biology to nutrition and public health, and making an argument that goes beyond individual behaviour. When a population eats may be as consequential as what it eats, and nutrition policy has so far attended almost entirely to the second question.

The scientific basis is Dr Panda's own work. Because the clocks in the liver, gut and other organs take their timing cue from feeding rather than light, the daily eating span functions as a physiological signal in its own right. Animal studies with matched calories showed clear differences in disease outcomes based on feeding window alone, and the human trials that followed have examined glucose control, cardiometabolic markers, sleep and weight. Meanwhile his app based studies found that a large fraction of people eat across fourteen hours or more without realising it.

The policy implication is that timing is a free intervention, with no prescription and no product, which makes it well suited to population scale public health and largely orphaned commercially.