Objective
Habitually eating late dinners is considered unhealthy as it may cause other unhealthy behaviors; therefore, we examine the relationship between eating late dinners and health-related behaviors among Japanese workers.
Design, Setting, and Participants
In 2015, we conducted a cross-sectional survey on 1521 Japanese drivers (1432 men, 89 women) working at a courier company.
Outcome Measures and Analysis
We compared the demographic, lifestyle-related (e.g., eating dinner within two hours before sleeping, skipping breakfast, sleeping patterns, smoking, alcohol consumption), and health-checkup information (e.g., body mass index, blood sugar, blood pressure) of drivers who ate late dinners at least three days per week (≥3 days) and those who ate late dinners less than three days per week (<3 days) using chi-square tests.
Results
The ≥3 days group comprised more men, individuals in their forties, and married and overtime workers. there were no differences in health checkup indexes between the two groups. However, more drivers in the ≥3 days group drank alcohol at night everyday (35.4% vs 23.9%, p < 0.001), skipped breakfast (44.2% vs 39.1%, p = 0.05), ate hurriedly (36.2% vs 22.1%, p < 0.001), and did not sleep well (38.2% vs 19.9%, p < 0.001) compared to the <3 days group.
Conclusions and Implications
Considering that eating late dinners co-occurred with other health-risk behaviors, interventions to change dinnertime must be implemented in order to encourage workers to eat breakfasts regularly. This may also result in reduced overtime work, implying that successful behavior change will involve considering company policies.
Funding
None
Article info
Publication history
P75
Identification
Copyright
© 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc.
