Among 302 undergraduates (mean age 20 years, 68.9% female) at a Nigerian medical university, poor physical food accessibility independently predicted disrupted circadian eating patterns at an adjusted odds ratio of 6.44, while a poor campus food policy environment raised that risk to AOR 9.53 — the strongest predictor identified. Nearly a quarter of students (21.2%) showed poor meal-timing regularity, and disrupted patterns correlated significantly with BMI category. Affordability was rated the weakest food-environment domain, suggesting cost barriers compound access problems.
This finding slots into a rapidly expanding literature linking chrono-nutrition — not just diet quality but meal timing — to metabolic outcomes including insulin sensitivity, obesity risk, and cardiovascular markers. Most chrono-nutrition research originates from high-income, Western university settings; this Nigerian cohort adds important geographic and socioeconomic context, highlighting that structural barriers rather than individual choices may drive circadian misalignment. The policy implications are unusually concrete: canteen hours, subsidy programmes, and on-campus food availability policies are all modifiable at the institutional level without requiring individual behaviour change.
Limitations are significant, however. The cross-sectional design precludes causal inference — students with irregular schedules may simply visit campus food outlets less. Self-reported questionnaire data introduce recall and social-desirability bias, and a single-institution sample of 302 students limits generalisability. As a preprint posted on medRxiv and not yet peer-reviewed, these effect sizes should be interpreted cautiously until independent replication and editorial scrutiny confirm the findings.