A new cookbook ties healthy eating to good sleep
[March 01, 2025]
By ALBERT STUMM
Anyone who has ever suffered in bed after eating three slices of pizza
could surmise there is some relationship between food and sleep quality.
For Marie-Pierre St-Onge, the director of Columbia University’s Center
of Excellence for Sleep and Circadian Research, years of studying the
relationship confirmed it.
Data from large-scale population studies showed that eating a lot of
saturated fat and simple carbohydrates made it harder to get deep,
restorative sleep, she said. The inverse was also true. People who don’t
get enough sleep, for example, were more likely to be obese.
“It’s a cycle of having poor sleep leading to poor dietary choices, and
lower dietary quality that further propels poor sleep,” St-Onge said.
If bad food could keep you awake, she wondered, can good food help you
sleep? Her research led to a new cookbook, “Eat Better, Sleep Better,”
co-written with Kat Craddock, editor-in-chief of the food magazine
Saveur.
St-Onge said the answer is yes. The book's recipes reflect her findings
that people with high-fiber diets report better sleep, and the dishes
rely heavily on what she called sleep-supporting ingredients.
Nuts, seeds and whole grains such as barley, buckwheat and kasha contain
melatonin, a compound the body also produces naturally to regulate the
circadian rhythm. Research suggests the anti-inflammatory properties of
ginger and turmeric improve sleep quality, as do the phytochemicals in
brightly colored fruits and vegetables like squash, cherries, bananas
and beefsteak tomatoes, St-Onge said.
Besides the properties of particular ingredients, the combination of
certain foods is key to encouraging your body to produce the hormones it
needs to fall and stay sleep, she said. Tryptophan, for example, is an
essential amino acid only found in food, but it requires nutrients such
as magnesium, zinc and B vitamins to be converted into melatonin and
serotonin.
St-Onge noted that people shouldn’t expect to fall dead asleep after
loading up on certain ingredients at dinner. Food has to be processed,
with chemical reactions transforming nutrients over time before they are
absorbed.
“It’s making sure you have a healthy diet across the day to have the
nutrients at the ready,” she said.
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This cover image released by Simon Element shows "Eat Better, Sleep
Better: 75 Recipes and A 28-Day Meal Plan That Unlock the Food-Sleep
Connection" by Dr Marie-Pierre St-Onge and Kat Craddock. (Simon
Element via AP)
 Recipes were developed for every
meal of the day, plus snacks and desserts, the authors said. The two
then arranged them into a 28-day meal plan designed to improve your
sleep.
Craddock said developing the recipes came naturally because the
research stressed using a variety of foods she likes to cook with
anyway. The challenge was making sure the recipes fell within the
nutritional requirements.
“My instincts are to go hard on bacon and butter and cheese and
heavy cream, and she pared a lot of that back,” Craddock said.
Instead of bacon, Craddock said, she could achieve similar flavors
with a little olive oil and smoked paprika. “It was a bit of a dance
back and forth between my more restaurant approach to making foods
delicious and her nutritional goals.”
A Creole gumbo recipe, for instance, is inspired more by a
vegetarian version often served during Lent than the heavier
traditional one. The andouille often used — a pork product high in
saturated fat — is swapped out for healthier chicken sausage. Adding
more than a pound of mixed greens makes it more like a vegetable
stew, and brown rice adds a complex carbohydrate.
With numerous charts and scientific research, the book is a
practical guide to improving your diet in general. But Craddock said
it also introduces people to international ingredients and dishes so
they might think beyond what they eat every day.
“If you dig a little deeper and look a little further, there are
healthful and flavorful and exciting ingredients from many cultures
that are right in our own backyard,” she said.
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