Goodbye breakfast: refusing a morning meal is not so bad

Is breakfast the most important meal? And is it true that a morning meal helps us maintain normal weight? The basis of the rule “eat breakfast yourself” is based on cultural traditions, scientific research and, to a large extent, marketing of cereal producers.

One of the earliest breakfast studies was done in the 1960s in California’s Alameda County. Scientists recorded the daily habits of local residents, such as breakfast, good sleep and regular exercise, and looked for connections between them, health status and longevity.

In recent years, this relationship has been studied more thoroughly and came to interesting conclusions. For example, researchers from Canada, who studied the habits of 12,000 adults, said there was no direct link between eating or refusing breakfast and being overweight. A recent study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that those who eat breakfast show the same results in weight loss as those who skip a morning meal.

And here is the result: many Americans no longer consider breakfast the most important meal. In a Twitter poll conducted by National Public Radio, 1 out of 5 respondents said they skipped breakfast or just had coffee. 25% of respondents eat yogurt or an energy bar on the go.

What do you eat in the morning?
17% – nothing.
26% – porridge.
24% – snack on the go with yogurt or a bar.
33% – hot breakfast: eggs, bacon.
I’d like to know what you eat for breakfast?
The company NPD Group found that Americans are moving away from the recommended three meals a day. This trend is most noticeable among millennials who skip breakfast 2 times more often than representatives of previous generations.

Millennials are also distinguished by the choice of products for a morning meal. If they decide to have breakfast, they prefer a hot breakfast with scrambled eggs instead of porridge.

How to reconcile the idea of ​​breakfast as the main meal with our eating habits?

If you look at the results of all kinds of scientific research, you can see that there is nothing magical in the morning meal. Most of us are not hungry for several hours after waking up. If you belong to those who snack on yogurt at 10 a.m., everything is fine. And some may wait for dinner and feel great. Such mini-starvation is even useful for losing weight.

Here’s what breakfast professor David Ludwig, an obesity researcher and author of Always Hungry, says about skipping breakfast:

It is important that there is in the morning, and not exactly when it is. If your breakfast consists of simple carbohydrates, such as sweet cereal or rolls, then it is as bad as not having breakfast, or even worse. A sharp jump in blood sugar programs the body to accumulate fat, and subsequently you need more calories to saturate.

That is, after breakfast with a high content of simple carbohydrates, you will quickly want to eat again and eat more. But if you eat a protein breakfast, for example from eggs, then hold out on it longer, because proteins and fats are absorbed more slowly than carbohydrates.

So what is he, the perfect breakfast?

Drew Ramsey, a psychiatrist at Columbia University who studies the relationship between food and mood, advises eating eggs in the morning with fresh greens and pumpkin seeds – they are rich in magnesium, which reduces anxiety.

There is growing evidence that a high-protein breakfast helps you stay full longer and control your appetite all day. And, it seems, millennials are already using this advice with might and main. As we mentioned earlier, they often prefer eggs for breakfast.

In a sense, we are back to basics: at the beginning of the last century, such a “farm” breakfast was very popular. Later, cereals, thanks to the efforts of marketers, began to be considered a healthier and more convenient breakfast option. But it seems that habits are changing again.