Debating the Merits of Breakfast
Maybe you’ve been reading about the widely reported study that calls into question the value of breakfast for weight loss. The stories seem to suggest that we’ve all been hoodwinked into eating breakfast and it’s just a myth that the morning meal makes any difference in our weight – even implying that we might be better off skipping breakfast if we want to lose weight.
Hogwash, I say. Why are we even planting that idea in people’s heads? Won’t this just be adding to the confusion?
This all stems from a new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition conducted by a research team at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. They concluded that our belief in the “proposed effect of breakfast on obesity” goes beyond what scientific evidence supports. We presume it to be true. They even suggest that the studies indicating a weight loss benefit of eating breakfast were simply misconstrued – influenced by the bias of the researchers who conducted those studies.
The new study picks apart the scientific literature on breakfast and concludes that missing breakfast has either little or no effect on weight gain, or people who eat breakfast end up consuming more calories at the end of the day than those who skip it. The Alabama researchers are even critical of the findings from the National Weight Control Registry that showed regularly eating breakfast was one of the habits of people who have lost a significant amount of weight and kept it off for at least a year. They claim that this research is the basis of widespread misinformation.
The researchers wanted to disprove the notion that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” So they conducted a meta-analysis – or an investigation that looked at a collection of studies – to demonstrate that this is simply a belief, not a scientific truth. I get that, but what’s the point?
Do we really need to have people question if they should eat breakfast? Do we really want them to skip breakfast so they can “save” their calories for later in the day? I think that will only backfire. And besides, bias or not, people who are successful at maintaining their weight do tend to eat breakfast. Maybe it’s not cause and effect, but it works for them.
Read the Full Article at http://blogs.webmd.com/food-and-nutrition/2013/09/debating-the-merits-of-breakfast.html?ecd=wnl_wlw_091813&ctr=wnl-wlw-091813_ld-stry_2&mb=
Source: by Janet Helm, MS, RD for WebMD on September 12, 2013 at http://blogs.webmd.com/food-and-nutrition/2013/09/debating-the-merits-of-breakfast.html?ecd=wnl_wlw_091813&ctr=wnl-wlw-091813_ld-stry_2&mb=
