No Breakfast? No Thanks.

My sister, Claire age 24 is one of those people who will fall for almost any fad diet. I am a big believer in breakfast, and that it is important to eat when you get up (especially eating something with protein). Claire recently has taken up the idea that you do not need to eat breakfast, and that the government tells us that you need to eat breakfast in order to improve the grain and cereal industry.

Over Winter break she asked me what I thought about the idea of skipping breakfast. I told her that if she wanted to cut back on her breakfasts that could be a good solution, however I did not recommend skipping breakfast completely. I take this view on eating breakfast because sometimes when I do not eat enough for breakfast I sometimes have episodes of syncope. It was because of this reason, I suggested that she just eat a smaller portion of food rather than her usual meal. There are multiple sources out there that suggest that eating breakfast can actually help you lose weight.

When she got back home, she sent me this New York Times article to prove it to me that skipping breakfast was in fact a good idea. In a cohort study conducted at a New York hospital, three different groups got three different breakfasts. The first group had a slice of whole grain toast, the second received oatmeal and the third received no breakfast at all. Among the three groups, the only group that showed a weight loss was the group that did not eat breakfast.

I did not think about looking more into the myth until last week when my sister mentioned something about it when I had called her. She said that she had not been able to skip breakfast every day, but she was trying to skip breakfast 3 times each week. When she had mentioned it, I decided to look into the research more. In the article from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the aim of their study was to determine if skipping breakfast led to a difference in health over time. The study was a longitudinal cohort study that asked students if they consumed breakfast everyday before school. The study followed up with the group years later, and there was a significant difference between breakfast eaters and breakfast skippers. Those who skipped breakfast tended to have larger waist circumferences and also showed greater cardio-metabolic health related issues.

Some of the reasons that the researchers suggest for the difference is that breakfast skippers tended to eat fewer fruits and vegetables during the day, which I found to be an interesting observation.  It makes sense those since fruit is a food that is common eaten at breakfast time. It is recommended that  we eat five servings of fruits and vegetables everyday, so encouraging non-breakfast eaters to pick up a banana or an apple on their way out the door seems like a simple enough way to get the day off to a good start!

Although I do not think that people should be filling up their cereal bowls each and every morning with cocoa puffs, but I do not see much harm in eating a bowl of cereal (my favorite breakfast food) with a handful of almonds. I personally do not think that I will stop eating breakfast anytime soon!