A good night’s sleep doesn’t just depend on your bedtime routine; it also depends on what’s on your plate. The food and drinks you consume in the hours before bed can have a surprising impact on how quickly you fall asleep, the quality of your sleep, how rested you feel, and how often you wake up throughout the night. Some foods contain nutrients that aid healthy sleep habits, and others can seriously disrupt your sleep. Explore some of each below to see if your pre-bedtime snacking habits are helping or hindering your sleep routine.

The Best Foods for Better Sleep

1. Eating Nuts Before Bed

Consuming snacks like almonds, walnuts, pistachios, or natural peanut butter as part of a healthy late-night snack can enhance your sleep quality, stabilize your blood sugar levels, and support muscle growth. Almonds are full of key nutrients like heart-healthy fats, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and the sleep-inducing chemical tryptophan, all of which help your body relax into sleep mode.

2. Late Night String Cheese

Do you wake up at night craving some unhealthy sweet or savory treats? Snacking on calcium-rich foods instead, like a piece of string cheese, may be the answer to your sleep disruption. Packed with fats and proteins to satisfy your hunger and cravings through the night, string cheese is slowly digested by your body for a peaceful night’s rest. Maintaining healthy calcium levels helps you fall asleep and stay asleep. It also regulates brain waves during REM sleep, which promotes higher levels of rest.

Other foods that are high in calcium include many other dairy products, as well as kale, and calcium-fortified foods such as orange juice, and non-dairy milk.

3. Iron-Rich Foods

Having an iron deficiency has been linked to poor sleep, insomnia, sleep apnea, and restless leg syndrome. It is not quite known why low iron levels affect sleep so drastically, but there are studies that definitively show that low iron levels lead to poor sleep. So, if you know you are iron deficient, eat more iron-rich foods or take an iron supplement and watch how your sleep quality improves.

Iron-rich foods include beef, chicken, and lentils, as well as raw pumpkin seeds, tofu, and eggs.

4. Tart Cherries

Tart cherries

are a fruit that is high in melatonin and tryptophan. Studies have divulged that tart cherries can improve your total sleep time and enhance your sleep efficiency. To give your body a sleep boost, make tart cherries your pre-bedtime snack.

Tart cherries are in season and readily available in the summer and are best enjoyed in their raw form, but you can also find tart cherry juice all year round. You can mix the juice with some sparkling water to make yourself a tart cherry nightcap.

5. Dark Chocolate

Despite chocolate being a seemingly poor choice as a late-night snack, dark chocolate may be exactly what you need to relax for a good night’s sleep. Eating dark chocolate in moderation at least an hour before bed can result in a more productive night’s sleep. The compounds found within dark chocolate are known to promote the production of serotonin, a chemical which is directly linked to calmness and relaxation. Consuming this snack can also reduce stress levels before bed, thanks to the inclusion of antioxidants and flavanols. Pairing dark chocolate with other sleep-enhancing foods like bananas and almonds is another way to secure that extra relaxing boost.

While many foods and food groups deliver the exact nutrients you require for a healthy night’s rest, we need to also shed light on the foods to avoid for better sleep.

Worst Foods to Eat Before Bed

1. Tomatoes Could be Ruining your Sleep

Despite having numerous health benefits, tomatoes could be the cause of your bad night’s sleep. If eaten throughout the day for breakfast, lunch or dinner, tomatoes are a great source of vitamin C and potassium. But, if consumed too close to bedtime, they can wreak havoc on your sleeping schedule. Due to their high acidity, tomatoes can trigger indigestion, heartburn, and acid reflux, which can all wreck your sleep and keep you awake for hours.

2. Chips 

It may be easy to quickly grab a bag of chips for a late-night snack, but their salt content could be dehydrating your body. Foods with a high salt content like chips and salted nuts are some of the worst things to eat for a good night’s sleep. It is recommended to avoid salty foods for at least two to three hours before bed to ensure you don’t experience disrupted sleep.

3. Instant Ramen Noodles

While they are an ultimate convenience food for many people, instant noodles might just be the reason you aren’t getting a healthy night’s rest. Like all ultra-processed food, instant noodles are linked to poorer sleep quality, more sleep disturbances, shorter sleep duration, and increased time taken to fall asleep. While instant noodles can provide iron, B vitamins and manganese, they lack key nutrients and, when consumed more often, can have a damaging effect on your sleep schedule.

4. Chicken

Despite containing tryptophan, an essential amino acid which promotes a healthier sleep schedule, chicken may not be the best choice too close to bedtime. In fact, experts say that high-protein foods like chicken and meat may be keeping you awake at night, as your body uses more energy and takes longer to break them down. Salami and pepperoni are also high in protein. They could be keeping your brain stimulated when you want to wind down, due to tyramine, a compound which triggers the release of norepinephrine, the alertness, fight-or-flight chemical.

5. Refined Carbs

As tempting as salty or sugary snacks can be before bed, experts have revealed that these refined sugar snacks may be keeping your body more alert and hindering your sleep. Filled with refined carbohydrates, chips, crackers, pretzels and other ultra-processed snacks are known as high glycemic index foods, meaning your blood sugar levels spike right after consuming them. As well as giving you a rush of energy, it also disrupts your sleep pattern as your blood sugar crashes during the night. If you don’t want to get rid of your evening snacking altogether, whole grain crackers and snacks are an excellent substitute due to their high levels of fiber and complex carbohydrates.

The foods you eat can play a meaningful role in the quality of your sleep. Choosing nutrient-rich options containing magnesium, tryptophan, or melatonin will support the body’s natural sleep process and help you unwind and rest more easily. While no single food is a cure for poor sleep, combining healthy eating habits with a consistent sleep schedule, regular physical activity, and a relaxing bedtime routine can make a significant difference.

Source: https://www.bedkingdom.co.uk/

References:

Too Sour to be True? Tart Cherries (Prunus cerasus) and Sleep: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis | Current Sleep Medicine Reports | Springer Nature Link

Dark Chocolate and Sleep: Unveiling the Sweet Connection

Struggling to Sleep? These 11 Foods Could Help You Rest Better

The 7 Best Foods with Melatonin, Recommended by Dietitians

52 Foods High In Iron