Breakfast is considered the most important meal of the day, as it breaks the fasting period from the night to the next morning. People place great importance on breakfast and believe that eating it is essential for weight management, as providing the body with the energy it needs will lead to less hunger throughout the day. However, this belief may not be as accurate as we think.
Experts have revealed that weight loss does not come from eating breakfast, but rather from consuming fewer calories throughout the day, which means that the key lies in what we eat over the course of the entire day, not just what we start the day with. David Allison, dean of the School of Public Health at Indiana University, states that skipping breakfast in the morning has very limited effects on body weight changes.
The researcher conducted a study on the significant reputation surrounding breakfast, which has led people to believe that it plays a crucial role in weight control and waist size. According to the Washington Post, the popularity of these opinions about breakfast largely stems from marketing by American breakfast cereal companies.
In the early twentieth century, benefits of breakfast cereals like "Corn Flakes" were promoted in the United States, claiming they boosted children's growth and enhanced adults' mental capabilities. The researcher believes that the impact of advertisements from the "CW Post" company was substantial in the United States, making breakfast critically important in people's minds.
The report notes that breakfast cereal companies funded several studies to recommend against skipping breakfast, highlighting its numerous benefits. These studies were characterized by a certain "deception," as they only mentioned the good weight of those who ate breakfast without addressing other factors that contributed to their avoidance of obesity and good health, as reported by Sky News Arabia.
The researcher states that conducting these studies systematically and scientifically about breakfast requires taking a random sample and then having one group of participants eat breakfast while the other does not. An analysis conducted in 2019 based on seven medical studies showed that individuals who were asked to have breakfast did not lose excess weight.
Experts assert that weight loss does not result from eating breakfast but from consuming fewer calories during the day, which means that the emphasis should be on what we eat throughout the day rather than just the morning meal. Similarly, a report from Harvard University in 2020 revealed that people who did not eat breakfast were more capable of losing weight, but experts did not recommend skipping this morning meal.
Experts explain that the assessment of breakfast depends also on what we consume; eating pastries filled with chocolate and sugar is vastly different from starting the day with a healthy meal of oatmeal and some vitamin-rich fruits.
