It's all to do with fasting, and glucose (sugar) levels in your blood. Not snacking after your last meal of the evening is a form of mini-fast, and it helps stabilise your blood-sugar levels. Each three-hour fast (or time without eating) reduces glucose levels by 4 per cent, and so if you stop eating at 8pm and don't have breakfast until 8am the next day, your glucose levels will have fallen by 16 per cent.
And why does this matter? It's because cancer feeds off glucose, and the less glucose circulating in your blood, the lower the energy source available to cancer cells.
"This is a simple dietary change that we believe most women can understand and adopt. It may have a big impact on public health without requiring complicated counting of calories or nutrients," said researcher Catherine Marinac from the University of California at San Diego.
(Source: Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, April 2015; doi: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-14-1292)