“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.”
“Skipping breakfast will make you gain weight.”
You’ve definitely heard one of those sayings before. But if you’re anything like me, waking up 10 minutes before you have to leave and just bolting out the door with the bare essentials, you might not exactly be a huge breakfast-eater. Definitely not because I’m too lazy to wake up early enough to eat it. Definitely not.
Either way, I’ve been skipping breakfast for years now, and I’ve always wondered: are these sayings really true? So here’s what’s up:
Many studies claim that eating breakfast is important to controlling your weight. However, many of these studies were sponsored by big cereal companies (think Quaker, Kellogg).
A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition, titled “Breakfast and Performance in Schoolchildren,” showed that among children aged 8-16, there was no statistical difference between children who habitually ate breakfast and children who habitually skipped it. However, not all studies agree with that one either.
Dr. Pollit, who conducted another study on children aged 9-11, found that children who eat breakfast “perform better in problem-solving situations where attention is a critical factor.” His research confirms that skipping breakfast for children affects their problem-solving; however, these findings cannot be extrapolated to adults.
Ultimately, there are a lot of contradictory studies, some pro-breakfast and some neutral to it. But much of the research in these was performed poorly, whether they studied too few people or were funded by the food industry itself. But the general consensus among scientists seems to be that, for adults, eating or skipping breakfast will neither hurt nor harm you. It’s just important that if you do eat it, you eat healthy - try to limit your fat and grease in the morning.
No matter the breakfast controversy, though, one thing is for certain: breakfast food is damn delicious. The choice to eat it is up to you.
Sources:
https://time.com/5516364/is-eating-breakfast-healthy/
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/17/garden/the-breakfast-debate-to-eat-or-not-to-eat.html
