Having breakfast may not be important for weight loss

Iron your fast or starve – a new study says that a morning meal has little effect on weight loss. (Credit: Lolostock / Shutterstock)

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who eat breakfast and those who skip it. This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the debate over whether or not adults should eat the most important meal of the day, especially for weight loss, can be polarizing – not just for the person average. Researchers have also debated this point for years.

Now, a new review of the literature indicates that it is possible that breakfast does not help us lose weight.

Eat or not to eat?

Over the years, Yays have argued that a morning meal can help us avoid overeating what we eat later in the day, which ultimately makes us lose weight. Meanwhile, the non have ignored its supposed importance.

To find out if they had it or not, the magazine, published in The bmj by a team from Monash University in Melbourne, having studied 13 studies over the last 28 years. Some of these studies have focused on how skipping or having breakfast had an impact on the body weight of participants; others have examined the relationship between eating in the morning and consuming energy each day. The trials lasted from 24 hours to 16 weeks and included people who ate or religiously skipped breakfast, as well as people who had fallen somewhere in between.

The team found that, overall, those who ate breakfast had a higher total daily energy intake, consuming an average of 260 more calories than those who ate the meal. And in fact, the review showed that those who skipped breakfast usually weighed nearly a pound less than their breakfast eater counterparts. In addition, people who gave up breakfast tended not to feel hungry anymore and had no major differences in the amount of energy spent compared to those who drank regularly in the morning.

However, there is a caveat to these results. The authors caution that the studies they have reviewed vary in quality, so it is important for people to examine the trends identified in their badysis.

Yet you work with what you have. And, although the authors recommend more rigorous studies in the future, the possibility that breakfast does not necessarily contribute to weight loss deserves to be considered. "Although having a regular breakfast can have other important effects, such as an improvement in concentration and attention during childhood," write in their conclusion "It is prudent to recommend breakfast to lose weight in adults, as this may have the opposite effect."