Across the Table News and Views Around the Neighborhood Food Fight 2000 September, October, November, December Favorite Cookbooks A Community Newsletter of Tasty Tips, Quips, Recipes, and Ruminations on Food and Cooking Susan Peery, Editor Tell a friend. Food Fight Long-simmering controversies about cooking. Diet mavens insist that foods eaten after a certain time of the evening are all stored as fat.
Many dieters succeed in part by banning all food consumption after supper.
Because their activity level is lower at night than during the day, they reason, their metabolism also slows down. Nutritionists argue that the timing of eating is not what matters. Your body continues to burn calories to support all of your organs and basic functions even when you are holding perfectly still in front of the TV or asleep in your bed. What counts in weight control is balancing total calorie intake with total calories burned. The trouble for most of us, of course, is that those 10 p.m. bowls of ice cream or buttered popcorn aren't usually related to hunger or a shortage of food during the day.