People who sleep late aren't getting enough veggies.

Or so a team of researchers concluded when they studied the sleeping and eating habits of adults with a habitual sleep duration of at least 6.5 hours. Extra shuteye was associated with higher fast food consumption and lower vegetable intake, particularly among men, as well as lower physical activity.

The research abstract was published recently in an online supplement of the journal Sleep.

Results show that late sleep timing is associated with lower body mass index and is not associated with total caloric intake; however, it remains associated with poorer diet quality, particularly fast food, vegetable and dairy intake.

"Our results help us further understand how sleep timing in addition to duration may affect obesity risk," said principal investigator Kelly Glazer Baron, Ph.D, associate professor of neurology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. "It is possible that poor dietary behaviors may predispose individuals with late sleep to increased risk of weight gain."

Dr. Wayne Giles, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Population Health, notes that Americans do not get enough sleep. He suggests establishing healthy habits, such as regular times for going to bed and getting up in the morning and switching off or moving televisions, computers, and mobile devices out of the bedroom.

The study group consisted of 96 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 50 years with sleep duration of 6.5 hours or more. The study involved 7 days of wrist actigraphy to measure sleep, food diaries to measure caloric intake and dietary patterns, and SenseWear arm band monitoring to measure physical activity. Dim light melatonin onset was evaluated in the clinical research unit. Body fat was evaluated using dual axis absorptiometry. Data were analyzed using correlation and regression analyses controlling for age, sex, sleep duration and sleep efficiency.