Crowning breakfast as the most important meal of the day is a long-held conviction among many Americans and some nutritional experts. In reality, there are data on both sides of the debate showing that breakfast is essential to maintaining a healthy weight, and also that breakfast is no more important than any other meal for weight loss. Recently, new evidence sheds more light on the topic.
(There is also research on how eating breakfast impacts cognition and brain function. For more information on that topic, stay tuned for Part 2 of this post next week.)
A sweeping and high quality review published last year in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded the belief that skipping breakfast causes weight gain “exceeds the strength of the scientific evidence.” The review found that in many observational studies, researchers made biased interpretations of their results, improperly used causal language, and used other results in a misleading way.
Adding to that review, there are two new studies published in this month’s issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that raise questions about the importance of breakfast. (Media reports in the New York Times and The Atlantic summarize the new evidence.)
In the first study, conducted by researchers at the University of Alabama Birmingham, 300 volunteers trying to lose weight were divided into groups who either ate or skipped breakfast. After 16 weeks, researchers weighed the participants, who lost on average one pound each. There were no differences in weight loss between those who ate and skipped breakfast.
The second study, conducted by researchers at the University of Bath, used 33 healthy volunteers to measure if eating breakfast affected their resting metabolic rates, cholesterol levels, blood-sugar profiles and activity levels. After six weeks, there were no changes in any of the measures, whether or not people ate breakfast. There was one difference in the groups: those who ate breakfast were more active in the morning, burning about 500 additional calories a day in light activity. But they also consumed about 500 more calories each day, so there was no impact on weight loss.
The take-home message: Breakfast does not seem to be as important of a meal as we once thought. In real-life, the topic is more nuanced than the evidence we have. There are many factors that impact weight loss: the quality of food consumed, activity levels and wake and sleep cycles, to name a few. Clearly, much more evidence is needed to understand how the timing of meals impacts nutrition and health.
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