Is breakfast the most important meal of the day? It probably depends on what you’re doing for the rest of it. Before the industrial revolution, most people ate leftovers for breakfast – if anything at all. Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays devised an ad campaign that popularised the modern staple of eggs and bacon in the 1920s, while John Harvey Kellogg introduced his popular line of cereals to help us avoid carnal sin. But with fewer of us labouring in fields or factories, is it still helpful to start the day with a hefty hit of protein – or even a bowl of cereal? Does it matter if you don’t – and might there actually be health benefits to breaking your fast later in the day?
First, let’s hear from the pro-breakfast lobby. A fair amount of observational studies (as opposed to controlled experiments, say) suggest that breakfast-skippers have a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and stroke, across a range of populations around the world. There’s also observational data that shows breakfast-skippers tend to choose poorer foods throughout the day – which makes sense, as skipping breakfast seems to keep levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin high, while the satiety hormone leptin stays suppressed.
It’s worth bearing in mind, though, that there are plenty of confounding factors – maybe the sorts of people who make sure they eat breakfast every day also pay attention to their health in other ways, while people who only have time for a coffee, er, don’t. But what if there was a population of people who demonstrably take their health seriously while deliberately skipping breakfast? Well, actually …
“Skipping breakfast can be described as a type of ‘time-restricted feeding’ [TRF], as you reduce the ‘window’ when you can eat,” says the nutritionist Drew Price. “There are a lot of claims about TRF, such as better insulin sensitivity, reduced markers of inflammation and even improvements to the gut microbiome, but the direct evidence from clinical trials is still relatively limited and there are lots of other factors to take into account.
“If I was working with someone who wanted a breakfast-skipping-type plan, then I would be placing more emphasis than ever on what they are consuming. If someone is going from three meals to two then they have to focus more on choices to make sure they get enough protein, healthy fats, vitamins, minerals, fibre and all the other beneficial nutrients, such as the phytochemicals you get from vegetables. And, of course, there are plenty of people who shouldn’t be considering skipping breakfast at all, including people with a history of disordered eating, various health conditions, or children and the elderly – steady energy intake covering the day is a good idea here for a number of reasons.”
The takeaway, then? Ignore the advertising slogans and eat in the way that lets you make the most healthy choices, most sustainably. If that means a couple of scrambled eggs and a pile of spinach at 7am, great – but if all you need to make it to 11am is a strong cup of coffee, don’t worry about it too much. Oh, and if a bowl of cornflakes can help guide you away from your baser urges, then go for it – we can all use a bit of help in the morning, after all.
