June 2024
IS BREAKFAST TOAST?
Researchers Find Benefits to Eating Early: A Healthy Meal is a Good Idea for Most, and Skipping it to Shed Pounds Probably Won’t Work.
Is there any meal more confusing than breakfast? For years we all heard that breakfast is the most important meal: a jump-start for your body and brain and a tool for managing weight. Then the message on breakfast got muddled. Studies muddied the waters about whether eating breakfast aids in weight loss. And concerns about ultra-processed foods made people wary of morning staples like cereal and frosted and sweetened grains and breads. And the rise of intermittent fasting, which restricts eating to particular time windows, made skipping breakfast popular and let people feel good about it. In particular, younger adults have joined the breakfast backlash. Nearly a quarter of people ages 20-39 skip breakfast, while overall 15% of all U.S. adults do.
Among nutrition professionals, the latest thinking boils down to this: a healthy breakfast is a good idea for most people, and skipping it to shed pounds probably won’t work. As ever, the devil is in the details. What people eat, and how much, has the biggest impact over time. A regular breakfast of sugary pastries could nudge the pounds and blood sugar up, whereas a cup of whole-milk Greek yogurt with nuts and berries could make those same numbers fall. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the studies casting doubt on breakfast’s benefits didn’t take details like these into account. Breakfast will likely also keep you from eating late at night, which raises the risk of obesity and related co-morbidities.
One of the most important reasons to eat breakfast: It’s when people typically get a big share of the key nutrients they need. While the meal only contributes about 21% of a U.S. adult’s daily calories, the average breakfast provides 42% of vitamin A, iron, and folate. The foods we are eating at breakfast are more nutrient-dense and healthful compared to the other times we eat. Many breakfast foods are often fortified with vitamins and minerals, and dairy products often provide one of the few opportunities for many people to get calcium and vitamin D. Our breakfasts also tend to contain less of what we don’t need, like excess saturated fat and sodium, at least compared to what we eat later in the day. Certainly the quality of the breakfast makes a big difference.
What about people who can’t stomach the idea of eating in the morning? Don’t force yourself. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to breakfast. Your response to a meal is likely influenced by your personal body clock and metabolism. Some people function just fine without breakfast, and for others, if they miss that first meal of the day, they’re just a wreck. One way breakfast can help with weight control is curbing late-night eating. When calories are eaten closer to bedtime, more of those late-day calories are stored as fat rather than burned off.
If you do eat breakfast, pick a meal combining protein, carbohydrates, and healthy fats and fiber. These might include avocado toast with an egg, or toast with nut butter and banana or whole-milk yogurt or steel-cut oats topped with nuts and berries or a smoothie with whole-milk Greek yogurt, fruit and spinach, or eggs with cottage cheese and toast. These breakfasts of about 300-400 calories should stave off hunger for 3-4 hours.
Andrea Petersen