Read time: 6 minutes
Highlights
Modern lighting may be changing more than what we see; it could be changing how our mitochondria produce energy.
- Light is a nutrient: Red and infrared wavelengths may support mitochondrial energy production.
- The missing spectrum: LEDs and infrared-blocking glass have transformed indoor light environments.
- Metabolic signals: Early research links daylight and red light exposure with improved glucose regulation.
- Longevity implications: Light belongs in the healthspan conversation alongside food, exercise, sleep and metabolic health.
- A strategic opportunity: Food and beverage leaders should start thinking beyond nutrients and include the environments in which people consume them.
Modern lighting and metabolism are becoming impossible to separate. That’s the startling conclusion emerging from a fascinating New Scientist investigation by Graham Lawton.
I’ve spent years thinking about how food acts as biological information. Now we need to ask a bigger question…
What if light is biological information too?
Is light a nutrient?
“Light is a nutrient,” says Bob Fosbury, the astrophysicist turned light biology researcher.
At first, that sounds strange. Plants use light to make carbohydrates, but humans eat food for energy. We don’t photosynthesise… do we?
Not exactly. But our cells may still be using light to help manage energy.
The key players are mitochondria, the structures inside our cells that produce adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. ATP is the energy currency that powers almost everything we do, from muscle contraction to brain activity and the construction of new proteins.
The electron transport chain inside mitochondria transfers energetic electrons through a series of proteins. That process creates a gradient used to produce ATP.
Research associated with Tiina Karu, Glen Jeffery and others suggests that red and near-infrared light can interact with mitochondrial components, particularly cytochrome c oxidase. The result may be a modest acceleration of electron transport and ATP production.
Fosbury calls this photometabolism.
The concept is simple but potentially significant. If mitochondria are struggling, additional energy production might help cells function more effectively. If mitochondria are chronically underpowered, could that contribute to metabolic dysfunction and accelerated ageing?
That’s the question we need to be thinking about!
The great indoor light experiment
For most of human history, daylight was unavoidable. People woke with the sun, worked under broad-spectrum daylight and lived in buildings that allowed heat and light to move naturally.
Then we redesigned the environment.
Since the early 2000s, two major changes have reshaped our exposure. Incandescent bulbs have been replaced by energy-efficient LEDs, while modern window glass often blocks infrared radiation to improve building energy performance.
That’s good for energy efficiency. But it may not be neutral for biology.
In the New Scientist article, Glen Jeffery estimates that we’ve lost around 95 per cent of the light spectrum from many indoor environments. Bob Fosbury uses another powerful phrase, “21st-century scurvy”.
The comparison is provocative. Scurvy occurs when the body is deprived of an essential nutrient. The emerging concern is that modern buildings may be depriving us of wavelengths that mitochondria evolved alongside.
To be clear, the science isn’t yet settled. A standard household LED isn’t the same thing as a medical photobiomodulation device. Therapeutic red-light studies generally use carefully controlled wavelengths, intensity and exposure times.
Still, the direction of travel is intriguing. We’ve changed the spectral environment surrounding human beings at a massive scale, often without asking what that might mean for metabolism.
What does the research show?
The evidence is developing quickly, but it needs to be interpreted carefully.
One human study led by Glen Jeffery and Michael Powner found that a 15-minute exposure to 670-nanometre red light before a glucose challenge reduced the total rise in blood glucose by approximately 28 per cent in healthy adults.
That’s a small study. It involved an acute glucose response, not long-term diabetes prevention. It doesn’t prove that sitting under a red lamp will transform metabolic health. But it does show something important. Specific light exposure can influence a measurable metabolic outcome in humans.
You can read the published study in the Journal of Biophotonics via PubMed.
A separate Maastricht University crossover study involved older adults with type 2 diabetes. Participants spent several days in natural daylight and several days under typical indoor LED lighting.
Average glucose didn’t change dramatically. However, daylight exposure was associated with more time in the healthy glucose range, less fluctuation and a shift towards greater fat use during the day.
The sample was tiny, with only 13 participants, and the exposure periods were short. Even so, the findings support a bigger idea about modern lighting and metabolism. The quality and timing of light may influence how the body handles fuel.
The researchers’ findings are available through Maastricht University and PubMed.
Could light affect the brain and longevity?
This is where the Longevity and Aging 2.0 conversation becomes especially interesting.
A UK Biobank analysis of almost 88,000 adults found that greater exposure to bright daytime light was associated with a lower risk of future dementia. Exposure above 1,000 lux was associated with approximately 16 per cent lower dementia risk, while around 42 minutes per day above 5,000 lux was associated with a reduction of about 17 per cent.
This was an observational study, so it can’t prove that daylight directly prevents dementia. People who get more daylight may also be more active, socially connected or generally healthier.
But the signal is strong enough to matter.
Read the daylight and dementia study and just think about it for a minute. Many office workers, students, hospital patients and older adults spend most of their day in lighting that is dramatically dimmer and spectrally narrower than outdoor daylight. And what about shift workers who may see little or no daylight for 5 or more days a week!
That’s not a trivial design choice. It’s an environmental exposure.
There’s also intriguing work from John Mitrofanis and colleagues on red and near-infrared light in models of Parkinson’s disease. Animal studies suggest that red and infrared exposure may protect vulnerable brain cells by supporting mitochondrial function and reducing inflammation.
Again, we need to be disciplined. Animal research isn’t proof of a human longevity intervention. But mitochondrial dysfunction is already recognised as one of the important hallmarks of ageing.
If light can influence mitochondrial energy, then it belongs in the healthspan discussion.
What about cancer and cardiovascular mortality?
This area requires even more care.
Richard Weller and colleagues have analysed ultraviolet exposure in a UK Biobank population of roughly 400,000 adults. Their work found associations between higher habitual UV exposure and lower all-cause, cardiovascular and non-skin cancer mortality.
That doesn’t mean we should abandon sun protection or deliberately burn. Absolutely not!
The findings relate to moderate, habitual exposure and are observational. Australia also has a very different UV environment from the United Kingdom. The practical message isn’t “seek unlimited sun”. It’s that sunlight biology may be more complex than a simple avoid-all-exposure message.
Weller’s research explores how sunlight may influence vascular function through nitric oxide and other pathways. These findings are distinct from the red and infrared mitochondrial story, but they point in the same broad direction.
The body responds to its light environment.
You can explore the research through PubMed and the University of Edinburgh’s Weller research group.
Blue light is part of the problem too
Red and infrared light may support mitochondrial activity. Blue light appears to be a different story.
Experimental research cited in the New Scientist article suggests that blue light can inhibit mitochondrial respiration and contribute to higher glucose responses. Separately, we already know that blue-rich light at night can disrupt circadian rhythms, sleep timing and hormonal signals involved in metabolism.
This is why the modern lighting and metabolism conversation can’t focus only on light colour.
Timing matters.
Intensity matters.
Duration matters.
The body may need bright, broad-spectrum light during the day and much lower, warmer light in the evening. That’s a very different model from spending the day under dim indoor LEDs and the night staring at a bright screen.
What can we do now?
I’m not recommending that anyone throw out every LED bulb. Nor should red-light devices replace medical treatment for diabetes, dementia or cardiovascular disease.
The evidence doesn’t justify that. However, several practical changes make excellent sense.
Get outside in daylight, especially early in the day. Work near a window where possible. Use a desk lamp rather than flooding an entire room with bright overhead lighting. Dim lights in the evening. Consider warm-spectrum incandescent bulbs in selected settings where energy use and safety allow it.
Building design matters enormously. Hospitals are beginning to recognise this. The outdoor ward at King’s College Hospital is one example of healthcare design that places daylight, fresh air and access to nature closer to patients.
That’s not just a beautiful architectural idea. It may become part of preventative health infrastructure.
What does this mean for food and beverage leaders?
Here’s the strategic opportunity.
Food and beverage businesses have rightly focused on sugar reduction, fibre, protein quality, gut health, personalised nutrition and healthy ageing. These areas will remain crucial.
But if metabolic health is shaped by the interaction between nutrients, light, sleep, movement and stress, then food doesn’t operate in isolation.
Imagine a future workplace where a company designs a breakfast product for stable glucose, places staff near bright daylight in the morning and shifts the lighting spectrum as the day progresses.
Imagine hospitals pairing personalised nutrition with light-aware recovery environments.
Imagine senior living communities using building design, meal timing and daylight exposure as one integrated healthspan strategy.
That’s where personalisation becomes genuinely exciting. A future nutrition platform could potentially combine food responses, glucose data, sleep patterns and light exposure rather than treating diet as a standalone variable.
For product developers, this could create new opportunities in foods designed around metabolic resilience, healthy ageing and product longevity. For leaders, it means asking a more sophisticated question about the future of health.
Are we developing better food for people who are still living in biologically mismatched environments?
My own work on the future of food and AI-driven NPD keeps bringing me back to the same conclusion. The winners won’t just innovate products. They’ll understand the wider systems shaping consumer health.
The bigger lesson
Modern lighting and metabolism is not a settled story. It’s an emerging field with promising mechanisms, early human studies and plenty of unanswered questions.
That’s precisely why it matters.
The best strategy isn’t to panic about LEDs or buy the most expensive red-light panel. It’s to recognise that light is an environmental input, just like food, air, temperature and movement.
We’ve spent decades optimising buildings for energy efficiency. Now we need to optimise them for biological efficiency too.
The future of longevity may not come from one miracle ingredient. It may come from thousands of small environmental decisions that help our mitochondria, brains and metabolic systems work with the world around them.
I’m fortunate to be exploring questions like these through my Longevity and Aging 2.0 work, and I’d love to hear what you think.
Should daylight and biologically intelligent lighting become part of every healthspan strategy?
To continue the conversation email me at tony@futuristforfood.com
