It's no newsflash that cramming in calories right before your nightly Netflix binge could indeed be a blockbuster disaster for your waistline. Now, new scientific insight shows that those who think they can avoid this metabolic grenade by delaying sleep after a late meal are essentially playing hide-and-seek with their blood sugar control.

According to a recently conducted, if petite, research study, it turns out that your body clock, the circadian rhythm, plays a substantial role in regulating blood sugar and insulin levels. You can't just outsmart it by pushing your snooze hour back. And you know what this suggests, right? That’s correct, a late-night snack attack remains a health hazard, regardless of whether you're hitting the hay immediately or burning midnight oil, reveals the study’s lead author, Daisy Duan, MD, an endocrinologist from Johns Hopkins Medicine.

When unpacking this project, Duan and her squadron of scientists rallied 13 starry-eyed, healthy adults who were willing to be sleep lab guinea pigs. To navigate their "biological night" start, the team tested their melatonin levels, the body's chemical lullaby that kicks in with nightfall. Turns out, this was the "golden ticket" for assessing an individual's circadian rhythms.

After analyzing glucose and insulin-plots over 24 hours, researchers found that late dinner scenarios (one hour after your 'biological night' began) sent glucose levels sky-rocketing 11% higher than the early dinner scenario (three hours before your 'biological night' began).

While no-size-fits-all is ever true in research, our takeaway here isn't to swear off late-night dining like a plague. Instead, it's about embracing the rhythm our body dances to. We’re wired internally for certain timings, and it seems it does best to eat and sleep in harmony with this clock.

Call it a food for thought or sincere advice - it's all about synchronizing your dinner times and bedtime with your internal body clock for improved metabolic health.