[ad_1]
We are told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Over the last 50 years, we have been bombarded with messages touting the health benefits of processed cereals and porridge oats. We are told that breakfast helps us lose weight by speeding up our metabolism, which helps us avoid feeling hungry and overeating later in the day.
These are not just marketing messages, they are at the heart of nutritional recommendations in developed countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, prepared by groups of scientific experts. These messages are reflected in the media and websites around the world. But what happens if the benefits of breakfast are just another myth of the diet?
No word for breakfast
Nowadays, it is common to follow the diet of our ancient ancestors, but no one seems to want to know whether or not he has breakfast. The Hadza in Tanzania are the last true hunter-gatherers in East Africa who, in our opinion, live a little like our ancestors. Living with them, we found a flagrant lack of routine for breakfast. They also have no regular word to describe "breakfast".
After waking up, men usually go on a hunting trip or picking up honey without eating, perhaps catching a few berries a few hours later. If they stay at the camp in the morning or even all day long, a handful of honey in the late morning – or even eaten as late as the afternoon – may be all they eat until they reach the end of the day. At a larger evening meal. That said, there is no routine and eating habits are highly variable, depending on the size of the camp and the season.
Read more:
I spent three days as a hunter-gatherer to see if that would improve my intestinal health.
Women stay close to the camp and some days prepare a simple meal, such as baobab porridge, or eat stored honey, but rarely before 9-10 am, which gives them a fasting time since their evening meal of more than 15 hours. The lack of a regular breakfast routine has not made them fat or unhealthy and most Western diseases are lacking. Maybe we should take a sheet from their book. At least, that's what the latest scientific evidence suggests.
Jeff Leach, Author provided
An honest mistake
The benefits of breakfast for health were completely negated by a new systematic review and meta-badysis of 11 randomized trials of the impact of skipping breakfast on weight and rate metabolic.
The duration and quality of studies vary considerably and seven of them have examined the changing weight as well as the evolution of energy consumption. Their conclusion is the same as in recent reviews that have been largely ignored, namely that there is no evidence to support the claim that skipping meals makes you fat or negatively reduces your metabolic rate at rest.
Many studies have now shown that skipping breakfast can be an effective way to reduce the weight of some people. So, why has the domain been wrong in the past?
One reason is the belief in "grazing" rather than "gorging" to avoid "stress" on the body digesting large meals, especially later in the day when glucose and insulin spikes are higher and the metabolic rate lower. The erroneous rationale was based on laboratory rodents and some short-term human studies. Even if the concept of overcompensation later in the day was correct – breakfast captains eat more and slightly reduce their activity – it is far from enough to fill the energy gap in a real environment outside the laboratory.
Scientists have been honestly misled in the past by numerous observational studies showing that obese people skip meals more often than thin people. This state of mind is rooted in nutritional dogma. But these observational studies were seriously biased. Breakfast captains were more likely, on average, to be poorer, less educated, less healthy, and to have a poorer diet. Overweight people were more likely to go on a diet and, after a frenzy, feel guilty and skip a meal.
Despite these scientific shortcomings and the steady increase in contradictory evidence from randomized controlled trials, the idea that skipping meals is unhealthy has been prevalent for decades. It is still part of the current NHS recommendations by Public Health England and one of its eight key messages on healthy eating, USDA nutritional guidelines for Americans, as well as Australian guidelines for nutrition.
Read more:
Exaggerated portions with real nutritional claims on cereal boxes can mislead consumers – new study
Another widespread argument in favor of breakfast is that, in addition to reducing obesity, it is essential to the mental well-being and attention span of children, even if they are well fed. Again, evidence from more than 20 independently reviewed trials is at best weak and inconsistent and likely biased in the same way as for adults.
Evidence also accumulates: limited meal times and longer fasting intervals can help some people lose weight. Some of these recent developments, which seem to run counter to traditional thinking, make sense when one considers the importance of the gut microbiome for our health and metabolism. The community of 100,000 billion intestinal microbes has a circadian rhythm and varies in composition and function in states of fasting and nourishment. The data suggests that microbial communities may benefit from short periods of fasting. Like us, they may need to rest and recover.
Read more:
Intermittent fasting could help fight diabetes – here's the science
Some of us are scheduled to prefer eating food earlier in the day and others later, which may suit our unique personal metabolism. About a third of people in developed countries regularly skip breakfast, while many others enjoy it. This does not mean that any overweight person would be better off skipping breakfast. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and prescriptive nutrition guidelines containing misinformation seem increasingly counterproductive and detract from important health messages.
Different populations have their own breakfast habits, but before going on a hunt, why not try your own breakfast by skipping experiences – this may be right for you.
Source link
