I found a great article on night-time eating.

The Resource
I've mentioned the "honest authority" Tom Venuto several times. He is a natural bodybuilder and prolific writer who has a reputation for having unbiased opinions and expertise. Whenever I have a question, I drop it in Google with "Tom Venuto" in quotes. Like magic, up pops an article that he has written that answers my questions with uncanny accuracy.

Tom on Calorie and Nutrient Timing
I was looking for additional information on "what to eat at night" (if anything) and came up with this article from August 2007:

http://www.tomvenuto.com/newsletter_archives/newsletter59.shtml

Tom tends to write more than the casual reader would digest in a single sitting, so I offer this condensed version. The symbol [...] indicates omitted content.

Night Time Eating And Fat Loss Revisited
By Tom Venuto, author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

“Eat breakfast like a king, eat lunch like a prince and eat dinner like a pauper.” This maxim can be attributed to nutrition writer Adelle Davis, and since her passing in 1974, the advice to eat less at night to help with fat loss has lived on and continued to circulate in many different incarnations.

[...] I too believe that eating lightly at night is usually solid advice for people seeking increased fat loss, especially for people who are inactive at night. However, some fitness experts today, when they hear “eat less at night”, start screaming, "Diet Voodoo!” It’s no wonder too, because the advice to “eat less at night” (usually given in a very specific context), has too often morphed into a common myth: “Eating carbs at night makes you fat.”

Opinions on this subject are definitely mixed. Many respected experts strongly recommend eating less at night to improve fat loss, while others suggest that it’s only calories in vs calories out over 24 hours that matters.

The critics claim that it’s silly to cut off food intake at a certain hour or to presume that “carbs turn to fat” at night as if there were some kind of nocturnal carbohydrate gremlins waiting to shuttle calories into fat cells when the moon is full. They suggest that if you eat less in the morning and eat more at night, “it all balances itself out at the end of the day” so it’s a wash.

Of course, food (or carbohydrate) does not turn to fat simply because it’s eaten after a certain “cutoff hour.” What we do know for certain is that the law of energy balance is with us at all hours of the day -

[...] Let’s make the assumption most people come home from work, then plop on the couch in front of the TV for the rest of the night. Let’s also assume that the majority of people go to bed late in the evening, usually around 10 pm, 11 pm or midnight. Therefore, nightime is the period when the least energy is being expended.

If this is true, then it seems logical enough to suggest that one should not eat huge amounts of calories at night at a time when it is not needed. The result could be increased likelihood of fat storage. Of course, from the within day energy balance perspective, it also suggests that if you train at night, then you should eat more at night to support that activity.

[...] Does your body really do a calculation at midnight and add up the day’s totals, then Zero-out like a business man when he closes out the register at night? It’s a lot more logical that energy is stored in real time and energy is burned in real time, rather than accounted for at the end of each 24 hour period.

[...] Some people [...] suggest you take your calorie cut specifically from carbs rather than from all macronutrients evenly across the board. [...] The late bodybuilding guru Dan Duchaine was [quoted as saying]:

“It’s true that insulin sensitivity is lowest at night. Let’s discuss what is happening in your body that makes it dislike carbs at night. Cortisol, a catabolic hormone, is highest at night. When cortisol is elevated, your muscle cell insulin sensitivity is lowered…”

More recently, David Barr wrote a tip on “lower carbs at night” for T-Nation. He said:

“Even when bulking, you don’t want to start scarfing down Pop Tarts before you go to bed. Our muscle insulin sensitivity decreases as the day wears on, meaning that we’re more likely to generate a large insulin response from ingesting carbs. Stated differently, we’re more predisposed to adding fat mass by eating carbs at night because our body doesn’t handle the hormone insulin as well as it does earlier in the day.”

[...] As a result of advice such as this, word got out in the bodybuilding and fitness community that you should eat fewer carbs at night. Real world results and the “test of time” have suggested that this may be an effective strategy.

[... C]onsider that “eat less at night” doesn’t necessarily mean “eat nothing at night; it may simply mean eating smaller meals, emphasizing lean protein and green veggies or taking a small protein shake such as casein.

Many programs suggest a specific time when you should eat your last meal of the day. However, I’d suggest avoiding an absolute cut off time, such as “no food or no carbs after 6 pm, etc,” because that lacks the individualization factor. People go to bed at different times, and maintenance of steady blood sugar and an optimal hormonal balance even at night are also important goals.

A more personalized suggestion for a fat loss program would be to cut off food intake 3 hours before bedtime, if practical and possible. For example, if you eat dinner at 6 pm, but don’t go to bed until 12 midnight, then a small 9 pm meal or a snack makes sense, but keep it light, preferably lean protein, and don’t raid the refrigerator at 11:55!

[...] Me personally? [...] I have always reduced calories and carbs at night when “cutting” for bodybuilding competition. It’s worked so well for me that I have names for the techniques: “calorie tapering” and “carb tapering” and I devoted a whole section to it in my e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle (BFFM)

--- Article Ends ---

If you found this interesting, I highly recommend reading the full article. He quotes many more sources and contrary points of view than I included here.

Late Night Snack
The reason I put this article in my blog today has to do with a midnight snack last night. I cut my calories too short (accidentally), and woke up hungry in the middle of the night. The first thing I did was go to the "snack packs" that my wife bought - They're basically 170-220 calories of crackers or cookies. I had one of those and a cup of milk... and I was up for the next hour.

Originally, I was looking for a healthier alternative to that junk and I wasn't sure what to choose.

It seems like "not eating anything late at night" is the best solution. Keeping your body in a low energy state helps tell your body that "its time for sleep". If you absolutely HAVE to eat, lean protein and fibrous carbs sound like the way to go.