I know many days I wake up and rush off to school skipping breakfast along the way. Also many people trying to lose weight, actually skip breakfast purposely. Doing this actually has the opposite effect and skipping breakfast should not be part of your daily routine. Skipping any meal, especially breakfast, can actually make weight control more difficult. If you skip breakfast, you tend to eat more food than usual at the next meal, or snack on high-calorie snacks to shave off hunger. In a study published in The American Society of Nutritional Sciences’ Journal of Nutrition, researchers found that, “Calories consumed early-on in the day were more satiating than the same amount of calories eaten later in the day; this led to lower calorie consumption overall. Therefore, eating breakfast helps with weight control.”
Kid’s especially need to eat breakfast. Their growing bodies and developing brains need regular refueling often, from food. When kids skip breakfast, they don’t get what they need to perform and be at their best. Studies show that kids who skip breakfast are tardy and absent from school more often than children who eat breakfast on a regular basis. According to the American Dietetic Association, “children who eat breakfast perform better in the classroom and on the playground, with better concentration, problem-solving skills, and eye-hand coordination.”
The NHS says, “Eating breakfast has long term health benefits. It can reduce obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.” A study conducted in England also showed that eating a good breakfast every day decreases your chances of developing insulin resistance. “When your body becomes insulin resistant, your cells become unable to respond to the functions of insulin. As a result, your body produces more and more glucose which accumulates in your blood stream.” Insulin resistance can lead to multiple health conditions such as diabetes, obesity, acne, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Eric Rimm, Sc.D., a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston says, “If you don’t bother with breakfast, though, the prolonged fasting might lead to a bigger than normal boost in “hunger hormones” such as ghrelin, encouraging you to overeat at your next meal and leading to spikes and dips in glucose. Over time, if your pancreas is constantly producing insulin to compensate for high levels of glucose, it will burn out and you’ll develop diabetes.” Also, In a recent study that involved almost 27,000 men, researchers found that those who didn’t eat breakfast were 27 percent more likely to develop heart disease than those who did. That is why it is so important that you don’t develop a daily routine of skipping breakfast. Although it may seem like skipping breakfast is not a big deal, research shows that it can lead to multiple health problems later on in life as well.
However, this does not mean ANY breakfast is good for you. It is important that while you are eating breakfast everyday, that it is nutritional. A nutritional breakfast provides energy for the day. Studies show that a healthy breakfast as opposed to an unhealthy breakfast can give you more strength and endurance, lower cholesterol levels, and improved concentration and performance in the classroom.
Works Cited
http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20140902/breakfast-importance
http://www.jhsph.edu/offices-and-services/student-affairs/_documents/breakfast
http://www.shakeupyourwakeup.com/content/why-breakfast-important-1
http://www.calorieking.com/learnabouts/Why-Is-Breakfast-So-Important_OTI5.html
http://www.3fatchicks.com/the-long-term-benefits-of-eating-a-healthy-breakfast/
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/10/why-eating-the-right-breakfast-is-so-important/index.htm
I am a large advocate of having breakfast every morning. Ever since I was in elementary school I have been eating breakfast before school. I found that in high school it gave me the energy in the morning that I really needed. At college it is different however. I often find myself eating breakfast not because of the energy boost it gives me, but because if I don’t have breakfast my eating schedule for the rest of the day gets screwed up. I find myself eating an earlier lunch which results in an earlier dinner. When I have an early dinner I sometimes eat again around 11:00 p.m. Therefore, I try to stay in the habit of eating breakfast every day. I do find it interesting how certain people can go the day without having breakfast. Having breakfast definitely has different effects on every person individually.
I believe that breakfast is the most important meal. Personally, if I miss out on breakfast, it really effects my meals for the rest of the day. It forces me to change what type of food I am having at certain times of day. In high school I could get away with not eating breakfast because I always had a lunch packed in my bag. Now, if I rush to class and don’t eat before I go, all I can think about is food. However, I have several friends who will never eat breakfast and are perfectly fine. This article explains that it is not necessary but rather you can choose whether or not to eat breakfast.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/breakfast-isnt-important/378917/
I recently did a blog post on this and found some conflicting results. My study was on eating breakfast and it’s affect on your weight. The study found that a majority of research on breakfast and weight was over reported and in fact there isn’t a strong correlation between eating breakfast and weight loss. It also found that many of the studies performed on this issue had examples of researcher bias which also contributed to the false positive results. So although the evidence for breakfast and weight loss may be convincing, 72 studies were found with misreporting their information providing false conclusions, so I would be careful.
Here is a link to the article where the study is cited:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/myths-surround-breakfast-and-weight/?_r=0
I like this study! They present absolute risk, and the sample size is really large which is great for reducing the effects of chance. I’ve heard so many people talk about how breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so this is a great presentation of a good study that proves this very thing.