Breakfast skipping might not be so bad after all

We’re told never to skip breakfast but turns out that it’s not the most important meal of the day, particularly if you want to lose weight. Here’s why. 

It’s a message rammed into us as children — breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

As adults we’re also told skipping breaky doesn’t actually help us lose weight, despite many diets telling you fasting is the way to go.

With so many contradicting theories around, it’s easy to get confused, but a new study shows breakfast skippers might be on to something when it comes to weight loss.

Australian researchers analysed a host of studies that looked at the effect eating breakfast regularly had on weight change and energy intake.

They found people who skipped breakfast consumed less calories and were on average 0.44kg lighter.

The Monash University team in Melbourne say the idea that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” comes from observational studies that can be skewed.

In their study published in the British Medical Journal today they say there is no good evidence to support the idea that eating breakfast promotes weight loss or that skipping breakfast leads to weight gain.

In fact, the findings show that people who eat breakfast have a higher daily calorie intake — an average of 260 more calories consumed in a day — and that skipping the mean does not make you hungrier later in the day.

About a third of people in developed countries regularly skip breakfast.

Previous studies have suggested that eating breakfast is linked with maintaining a healthy weight, but they say these findings could also reflect someone’s wider healthy lifestyle and food choices.

Currently, the available evidence does not support modifying diets in adults to include the consumption of breakfast as a good strategy to lose weight, they write.

Although eating breakfast regularly could have other important effects, caution is needed when recommending breakfast for weight loss in adults, as it may have the opposite effect.

In a linked opinion piece, Professor Tim Spector, of King’s College London, says people have different preferences for when they eat food, which might suit their unique personal metabolism.
Prof Spector believes there is no “one size fits all approach”.

Prescriptive slow moving diet guidelines filled with erroneous information look increasingly counter-productive and detract from important health messages, he said.

While waiting for guidelines to change, no harm can be done in trying out your own personal experiments in skipping breakfast.

The researchers have stressed that the quality of studies they looked at was low so the their findings should be interpreted with caution.

They looked at evidence from 13 randomised controlled trials, mainly in the US and UK, from the last 28 years.

Participants included both breakfast eaters and skippers, or both, at a range of body weights who were monitored between 24 hours and 16 weeks.