Dr. John Day, Cardiologist

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Skipping Breakfast is Bad for You, or Is It?

You were always told that skipping breakfast is bad for you.  After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right?

According to the experts, if you skip breakfast you will gain weight, feel horrible, and put yourself at risk for heart disease.  But is that really true?

In this article, I challenge this long held belief that skipping breakfast is bad for you.  Based on the latest scientific findings, I’ll let you decide if skipping breakfast is bad for you or not.

Breakfast for Me

I have always been a breakfast eater.  Even today, as soon as I woke up I ate breakfast.

In my younger years, I ate the standard American breakfast.  Plenty of processed carbs, in the form of breakfast cereal, instant oatmeal, pancakes, and fruit juice.  Somehow, I always found it strange that I was hungry again an hour or two after eating such a large breakfast.

Today, I eat much better and don’t get hungry again until lunchtime.  Every morning I have a big salad without salad dressing, chia and flax seeds mixed with nut butter on Ezekiel Bread, fruit, and a few dark chocolate covered almonds.

I would never dream of skipping breakfast.  For me, I just feel better with breakfast.  I am also much more productive with my morning routine if I eat first.

Just because eating breakfast works for me, does it mean that everyone else should eat breakfast as well?

What is the scientific data for eating breakfast?

Everyone knows that skipping breakfast is bad for you, right?  Eating breakfast is so ingrained in our culture that few would consider it possibly healthy to skip breakfast.  Indeed, many observational studies have shown that eating breakfast protects against weight gain and heart disease.

The problem is that these studies have just been observational studies.  In other words, people who ate breakfast were observed to be leaner and healthier.

These studies don’t prove that eating breakfast made them leaner or healthier.  Perhaps it had nothing to do with eating breakfast at all.  Perhaps the real reason is that breakfast eaters may be more inclined to work out in the morning.  Fortunately, we now have much better studies to answer the question, is skipping breakfast is bad for you?

The Bath Breakfast Study

To challenge the long-held belief that skipping breakfast is bath for you, researchers from Bath England randomized overweight adults to either eating or skipping breakfast. Here are the key findings of their study:

1. Metabolism was not affected by eating or skipping breakfast.

2. Breakfast eaters ate more total calories and had a statistical trend toward weight gain.

3. Measures of heart disease were not affected by eating or skipping breakfast.

4. Breakfast eaters were more physically active in the morning.

5. The longer feeding window of breakfast eaters caused lower insulin spikes.

As you can see, there really were no critical differences between breakfast eaters or skippers.  Indeed, in two other well designed studies, there also was no significant difference in eating or skipping breakfast.

When is eating breakfast critical?

Does the Bath Breakfast Study mean that you should skip breakfast?  Absolutely not.  I certainly will not give up my daily breakfast routine based on the results of this study.

However, it should be noted that the Bath Breakfast Study does not apply to everyone.  This was just a small study of overweight young and middle aged adults.  For children it is a completely different matter.

Studies have consistently shown that breakfast is critical for optimal school performance in children.  This is especially true for impoverished children.  In fact, even children who eat two breakfasts, one at home and then one at school, are less likely to become obese.

When may skipping breakfast be healthy?

If you are a healthy young or middle aged adult, and do not feel hungry in the morning, then forcing yourself to eat breakfast may be the wrong thing to do.  Indeed, depending on what time you last ate the previous day, skipping breakfast may be a form of intermittent fasting.  As I have discussed in a previous article, intermittent fasting may help with weight loss and preventing heart disease.

Another benefit to skipping breakfast is that, for most Americans, breakfast is the unhealthiest meal of the day.  Fruit juice, and at least 99% of all breakfast cereals, bagels, pancakes, waffles, toast, or yogurt, are little more than rapidly absorbed sugar to the body.

Take Home Message

The take home message of this article is that the conventional wisdom that skipping breakfast is bad for you may not be correct.  Based on my research of the scientific data, I could find no compelling reason for adults to eat breakfast as long as you are healthy.

Indeed, my opinion is the same as the researchers in a recent study, breakfast may just be another meal.  For some people, skipping breakfast may be the right thing to do.

As long as you are healthy, try skipping breakfast a few times to see if it helps you with your health goals.  If you are already skipping breakfast, then don’t feel like skipping breakfast is bad for you.  The key message of this article is to find out what works best for you.

As for me, I will continue to eat my same breakfast every morning.  For me, skipping breakfast absolutely doesn’t work at all.  When I skip breakfast I get so hungry and irritable that I am of no use to anyone.  Especially myself.

Are you a breakfast eater or skipper?  Please leave your experiences below.  If you have any questions about what you have read, leave those questions below as well.  I will do my best to answer every question as quickly as possible.

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