Using the data of 4548 people from the 2007-2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the researchers examined how much sleep the participants reported getting each night, as well as a very detailed report of their daily diet. They defined very short sleep patterns as less than five hours a night, short sleep was five to six hours a night, standard sleep was 7 to 8 hours, and long sleep was nine or more hours a night.
The results were that short sleepers consumed the most calories, followed by normal sleepers and very short sleepers, whilst the least calories where consumed by long sleepers. Very short sleepers drank less tap water, and had the least variation in what they ate, whereas normal sleepers, on the other hand, showed the highest food variety in their diets. This is a good marker for wellness, as a varied diet includes multiple sources of nutrients. Long sleep was associated with consuming less chocolate, tea, eggs and fatty meats, and more alcohol.
According to study author Michael Grandner, an instructor in psychiatry and member of the Centre for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology, the study, which was published in the journal, Appetite, is one of the first of its kind, and therefore the findings about the role that diet plays on sleep quality are more hypothesis-generating than confirming: ‘It was like, “no one has ever entered this country before, let’s go in and take some pictures”.’
Grandner says that the study ‘reminds people that we have come to the point in our society where we recognise that our diet is important to our health. We don’t always act on it, but we recognise it. We haven’t come there with sleep yet. People don’t brag about how much they eat anymore, we used to, but we don’t anymore, but we still show off about how little sleep we get.’