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Proper meal before bedtime may promote better sleep habit.  Simple changes like avoiding food with too much fat, eating food that are easier to digest, avoiding food that are too stimulating, and ensuring meals are balanced and not too big or too small can have a big impact to your sleep. 

Eating too much high-fat meals contribute to numerous things like raising cholesterol and indigestion. Fried and fatty foods can cause the LES to relax, allowing more stomach acid to back up into the esophagus and delay stomach emptying.  Cibele Crispim, MS, of the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, conducted a study that found that more fat you consume each day, the less likely you are to get a good night’s sleep.   

It’s recommended to have lean proteins at dinner and skip fried foods while keeping oils at minimal.  Ensure you include complex carbs to balance it out.  Consumption of carbohydrate-rich, protein-poor meal can increase synthesis of the brain neurotransmitter serotonin.  Eating protein does block this effect.  Consuming a high-protein meal will cause a lot of amino acids to enter the brain and is known to have stimulant effect.   

Also ensure you do not eat too much or too little.  Eating too much also causes sleep problems, even if does temporarily make you feel drowsy, it will prolong digestion, which interferes with a good night’s sleep. It’s recommended to have light evening meal of 500 calories or less, but this will depend on your body.  Include lean protein to help curb midnight snack attacks.  If you are used to eating midnight snacks, you should try to break the habit, which may take up to two weeks to break. 

Spicy foods may also lead to indigestion and reflux symptoms, which may disturb your sleep.  Some spicy ingredients include garlic, chilies, cayenne, or other hot spices.  These ingredients are gas-forming foods, and it causes abdominal discomfort, which in turn interferes with sound sleep.   

Your meal should also not include excess amount of sugar or any caffeine sources.  Your body tends to cool down by lowering heart rate, temperature, and so on to prepare to sleep at nighttime.   Eating any food that disturbs this sleep cycle behavior will cause poor sleep. 

Meals like seared cod, turkey wrap, roasted salmon and veggies are good examples of dinner that promotes good sleep.  Fish contains high amount of melatonin, and if you throw in nuts, which has the highest content of melatonin within plant foods, you’ll have even better sleep.