A study conducted at the University of Bath has found that eating breakfast does not make too much of a difference in daily metabolic rates and does not significantly contribute to weight loss.
Science World Report describes the research:
"I almost never have breakfast," said lead study author James Betts of the university, via the New York Times. "That was part of my motivation for conducting this research, as everybody was always telling me off and saying I should know better."
For the study, researchers examined 33 men and women of normal weight who either ate a 700-calorie breakfast or skipped it altogether for six weeks. Researchers monitored the participants' metabolic indicators such as blood sugar, cholesterol and resting metabolic rate.
Findings revealed that the metabolic profiles of most were pretty close throughout the course of a normal day.
A second study also examined the morning eating habits and weight loss of 300 volunteers who expressed a desire to lose weight. The participants were put in certain groups that ate breakfast every day, skipped it every day or just kept on with the usual morning habits.
After 16 weeks, all of the participants were weighed. Researchers found that overall, very little weight loss was recorded from each of the groups. Furthermore, researchers found that weight loss was unaffected whether they were regularly eating breakfast or skipping it.
USA Today cites another researcher in the United States:
"Our simple question was (when it comes to weight loss), does it help to eat breakfast? And the answer seems to be probably not," says David Allison, director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Nutrition Obesity Research Center and senior investigator of the study reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
Allison emphasizes that the study sheds no light on the foods eaten at breakfast, about weight gain among underweight or normal-weight people or how breakfast impacts children. "It's not a study of any outcome other than weight loss," he says.
Before taking those findings as an excuse to down a Grand Slam Breakfast while also trying to shed pounds, other diet and nutrition experts say that eating a nutritionally sound breakfast is still a good rule of thumb when it comes to weight loss and good nutrition in general.
