Food intake timing is influenced by the SCN, light-dark cycles, and a third input allowing food seeking outside active times.

“Your daily intake of food is again, dependent on the SCN and light-dark input. We found that if food is not available, there is yet a third input that is not depending on the SCN, not depend on the arcuate, depending on a completely different brain regions. So the animal can actually start looking or the human can start looking for food when it's scarce, even at time when they are not supposed to be active.”