Skipping Breakfast Not An Effective Diet Method

POSTED: 10:37 a.m. PDT August 1, 2003

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BERKELEY, Calif. -- People who skip breakfast are just as likely to carry extra weight as those who chow down on bacon and eggs every morning, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, once again proving Dr. Atkins may not have been right.

The study found that non-breakfast eaters and meat and egg eaters typically weigh more than those who tend to eat other foods for breakfast.

"Skipping breakfast has already been established as a risk factor for being overweight, but our study is the first to really look at how different breakfast types may affect weight while controlling for lifestyle and demographic variables," said Coralie Brown, co-author of the research paper and a graduate student at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health at the time of the study.

The paper was being published in Friday's issue of the "Journals of the American College of Nutrition," and comes at a time when the proportion of American adults who skip breakfast has increased from 14 to 25 percent between 1965 and 1991.

The number of obese adults has also grown, jumping from 23 percent in 1994 to 31 percent in 2000, according to statistics from the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention.

"More and more Americans are skipping breakfast as the pace of our lives becomes increasingly hectic," noted Gladys Block, a UC Berkeley professor of nutritional epidemiology and principal investigator of the study.

"What our study shows is that if the goal is to lose or maintain weight, skipping breakfast is not a good way to go about it. Skipping breakfast may be just as bad as eating a chunk of cheese first thing in the morning."

The researchers analyzed data from more than 16,000 adults who participated in the Third National Health and Nutrition and Examination Survey from 1988 to 1994.

The data included body mass index measurements, age, gender, rage and other demographic information. The researchers also controlled factors such as physical activity and smoking and placed participants in one of 10 breakfast categories based on the foods they reported eating every day.

"It appears that foods with low levels of insoluble fiber, such as meat and eggs, are linked to excess weight," Brown explained. "That could be because insoluble fiber takes longer to digest, so you feel full longer. That may prevent overeating later in the day."

As for those who skip breakfast being overweight, the researchers said one possible explanation could be that they already were overweight and are trying to cut down on calories by skipping a meal.

However, studies have found that this practice often leads to eating larger meals later in the day, which contributes the most to weight gain, rather than spacing the calories out throughout the day, which is healthier.

I'll bet that the group they are talking about who have "bacon and eggs" for breakfast also chow down on hash browns and toast with their bacon and eggs. I have never felt as good or controlled my weight as well as I do eating my chorizo and eggs for breakfast.

;-Deb

Personally, I'm really mystified by this wide-spread notion of breakfast having such an overwhelming effect on weight gain. I can appreciate the rationale of it being an important meal to break the fast, moderate blood sugar, or fuelling to start the day, and all of that; but, skipping breakfast having a positive correlation to obesity?

I've skipped breakfast the past 10 years of my life. From as much habit as necessity, since the first 5 of those 10 years my day started at 6 am. I have never felt a compulsion to eat more just because I skipped breakfast. Moreover, skipping breakfasts has never adversely affected my morning runs either.

So, I'll never understand the big deal with breakfast. As far as I'm concerned, skipping breakfast has kept me in better shape than if I insist on eating it even if I'm not hungry in the morning. I mean, who is hungry when first awaking?

Regards,

Frederick

I dont like eating first thing in the morning! I read you should however, so I just make a protein shake and drink that when i get to work around 7:30 or 8. Could I just stop eating breakfast all together? Is that what you are saying?

Hi there,

No, I’m not suggesting that you “stop” eating breakfast, and I certainly hope I haven’t unwittingly inferred that.

What I am trying to express is this. There are certain anecdotal adages, which from regular overuse seem to ring true in our collective consciousness even if those “adages” aren’t fully backed by the veracity of scientific evidence. For instance, in these so called studies everyone seems to quote espousing the merits of eating breakfast not only as an ideal way of starting the day, but also as a reliable proof against overindulgence leading to obesity. I find these studies very unscientific and highly flawed, as most such studies inherently are afflicted. For instance, how large was their sample study? Was it enough to lead them and generalize that skipping breakfast leads to obesity? Perhaps, maybe it isn’t skipping breakfast per se, which leads to obesity, but the lifestyle conducive to missing breakfast would be one that makes it a highly probable for obesity. In other words, those people who have both a propensity for overindulgence and lacking enthusiasm for any physical activity are naturally inclined to sleep very late eating a huge amount of food at 1 am before finally drifting off to sleep at 3 am. The latter will routinely miss breakfast since they’ll wake up in the afternoons. So, instead of equating breakfast with a morning meal, perhaps they should simply state the first meal? Kind of like, being fat itself isn’t the health malady we make it out to be, but the lifestyle which leads to obesity shares a common ground for being unhealthy—once again, overeating with no physical activity. On that same token, perhaps in their study, there are already overweight people who are in a desperate effort to cut calories simply skip breakfast towards that end? Obviously, we can see a plethora of rational reasons why such a study can be flawed. I’m always very skeptical about any research not backed by the gold standard of double blind placebo taking place in a fully controlled environment ensuring the variables are identical to each factor compiling the data. This skipping breakfast makes you fat adage is far from that standard propagated more by Kellogg’s and General Mills than anyone else.

My point is simply that if one isn’t hungry in the morning, why eat simply because some innocuous studies based on at best dubious science dictates that you should? I can understand and appreciate making an effort to alter my natural lifestyle if the benefits are rooted on solid science, like lower carb eating appears to be. For most of us living and working in modern western society who isn’t independently wealthy or have yet to win the lottery, time is an extremely limited and valuable commodity. I run for 35 minutes every morning—for the empty stomach cardio benefits—instead of using that time for breakfast. On the contrary to popular belief, the vigorous exercise infuses me with more energy than any amount of “morning” breaking the fast then I could ever eat. Furthermore, in our modern times, most of us make a living sitting in an office where our most strenuous activity is pushing buttons on a ubiquitous matt black telephone with more buttons than we’ll ever know what to do with. How exasperatingly difficult can it be to make it a few hours to lunch without eating breakfast?

To me, these studies are good for only one thing. For those people who insist on eating breakfast, they should continue to do so with confidence, which is a far cry from basing on those studies suggesting people who aren’t inclined to eat breakfast forcibly make an effort to do so. You mentioned not being hungry in the morning, and I’d wager you’d easily make it to lunch if you skipped the morning fare entirely. To what end to you force yourself to drink a morning shake? Just because these logic-perforated studies dictate you should?

Lots of well meaning people in my life, at one time or another, have impressed upon me the values and wisdom of eating breakfast. For the sake of harmony, I think I’ll reciprocate their good intentions with a gift of my own—a stuffed bear with a sign attached to him reading, “just give me some chocolate and no one gets hurt.” LOL

With kindest regards,

Frederick

RE: Veracity of studies

Just occured to me, I could take a poll of nutritionally challenged 3rd world countries and definitively show through the data that people skipping breakfast--from necessity here since food is so scarce--are overwhelmingly more slender than those--the few rich--who eat breakfast daily.

I know I sure do better with an nice fatty protein laden, no-carb breakfast. Not like the old days when my juice/bagel/cereal carb overload left me with the shakes and sweats by 11:00 am. But speaking of breakfast, here's one - I read that aged old sicilian peasants frequently start their day with a waterglass full of olive oil. And then do hard physical labor until well into the afternoon. Works for them. I'll stick with the eggs &cream scrambled in butter. YMMV. Bill

I guess I will stick with drinking my shake. By the way Frederick, legal field?

I too am dubious of research which may start out with flawed premises and trying to only look at part of the picture (or day's meals) in drawing "conclusions." I do, however, think there may be some clue as to not so much whether one has breakfast/first meal shortly after awakening, but in a more general sense, for HIGH CARB eaters, how long they go between *any* meals: the longer they space their meals apart, the more dramatic some of their blood sugar levels may drop, causing some of them a sense of needing a quick rush of high sugar/carb energy. In the "no breakfast" application of that, a high carb eater has just coffee for breakfast (or nothing) and by 10am, semi-depleted blood sugar, falls prey to the mid-morning donut for a quick rush. Whereas low-carb eaters with their long-term appetite suppresion can either go without breakfast or with a nutritious low-carb moderate protein breakfast and not succumb to those low energy spikes inbetween meals as easily. The research doesn't even properly consider any of this, and like an earlier post pointed out, that supposed "bacon and egg" breakfast may have been bacon/egg/muffin/toast/juice the researchers were analyzing and mislabeling it "Atkins."

Plus, the "bacon and eggers" could include a large number of those new to the Atkins eating - so, of course, then they would have some weight to lose.

After all, we are growing in numbers so quickly that the entire food-producing economy is being forced to change.

I'm taking a statistics class right now and the first thing we were taught is that you can't take the results of any study worth a grain of salt without knowing how it was designed, who funded it and how they analyzed the data. The article has so many holes in it that, without further information, you can't really give much credo to anything in there.

In college (back when you ran computer programs with a stack of punch cards), I took a statistics class from a bona fide genius. Between teaching us the nuts and bolts of statistical analsys, he frequently reminded us of the points that melissasvh states. Every class, he regaled us with a story of some corporation or interest group hiring him to statistically "prove" their point, and then the other side hiring him later to "prove" the opposite. Being a genius, he always found a way to make his clients happy.

Well, my paper ran a story on this study this morning. As someone here suspected, their idea of an atkins breakfast was "eggs, meat and potatoes" which the fattest people ate. A lousy study, though I agree with its basic premise that breakfast is a good idea. Just watch what it is. When I was in college, my breakfast was a 16oz RC cola, and I know now where it got me. Bill