Junk Food Cravings Attack At Night

Last week new research showed that the habit of eating later in the day could have led to America's obesity problem, and here's one reason why: Data shows that when we eat later, we tend to eat junk food.

Massive Health compiled data pulled from 500,000 meals on Eatery, where users tweet the food they eat at all times of the day, finding that while most people eat healthy when the sun is out, once nighttime hits, the bad foods come out.

In the span of five months, the data below shows that Americans ate healthy (green) in the morning — the infographic depicting eating trends at 9 a.m. PST shows the healthy (green) eating.

By dinner time, most of the foods are charted as "medium"in America, as shown below at 7 p.m. PST.

By 11 p.m. PST, however, the number of people eating drops off, but most of the foods eaten are considered red, or extremely unhealthy.

NPR The Salt reports that this trend isn't just an American way of eating; people across the globe tend to eat more unhealthy food later at night.

As for how much people eat during the day, the data shows the people eat the least for breakfast, eating 3.9 percent more for lunch, and 5 percent more for dinner, a Massive Health representative told us.

Massive Health also found that we eat worse over the weekends, eating 1.5 times as many cupcakes and downing 1.6 times as much beer. The trend of eating junk food at night, however, may be half the reason why a 16-hour nighttime fast might just work.