It serves as an opportunity to help you fuel your day and provide key nutrients that your body needs. If you choose not to eat breakfast, there is no reason to feel guilty, and there is not much evidence that it can negatively impact your health.

What is important is to eat in a way that works best for you while living a healthy lifestyle and ensuring your nutrient needs are being met during your other meals. If you are finding it challenging to meet your nutritional needs, consider speaking with a registered dietitian who can help you navigate through any questions you may have.

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Share on Pinterest Design by Diego Sabogal. Evidence in support of eating breakfast. Does skipping breakfast cause weight gain? Are people who eat breakfast healthier? This is especially important for your brain, which relies almost entirely on glucose for energy.

In the morning, after you have gone without food for as long as 12 hours, your glycogen stores are low. Once all of the energy from your glycogen stores is used up, your body starts to break down fatty acids to produce the energy it needs. But without carbohydrate, fatty acids are only partially oxidised, which can reduce your energy levels.

Eating breakfast boosts your energy levels and restores your glycogen levels ready to keep your metabolism up for the day. Skipping breakfast may seem like a good way to reduce overall energy intake. Essential vitamins, minerals and other nutrients can only be gained from food, so even though your body can usually find enough energy to make it to the next meal, you still need to top up your vitamin and mineral levels to maintain health and vitality.

People who regularly eat breakfast are less likely to be overweight or obese. Research is ongoing as to why this is the case. It is thought that eating breakfast may help you control your weight because:. Studies suggest that not having breakfast affects your mental performance, including your attention, ability to concentrate and memory.

This can make some tasks feel harder than they normally would. Children and adolescents who regularly eat breakfast also tend to perform better academically compared with those who skip breakfast. They also feel a greater level of connectedness with teachers and other adults at their school, which leads to further positive health and academic outcomes.

People who eat breakfast generally have more healthy diets overall, have better eating habits and are less likely to be hungry for snacks during the day than people who skip breakfast. Children who eat an inadequate breakfast are more likely to make poor food choices not only for the rest of the day, but also over the longer term.

People who skip breakfast tend to nibble on snacks during the mid-morning or afternoon. This can be a problem if those snacks are low in fibre, vitamins and minerals, but high in fat and salt. Without the extra energy that breakfast can offer, some people feel lethargic and turn to high-energy food and drinks to get them through the day.

If you do skip breakfast, try a nutritious snack such as fresh fruit, yoghurt, veggie sticks and hummus, or a wholemeal sandwich to help you through that mid-morning hunger. Skipping breakfast was shown to be common in the most recent national nutrition survey of Australian children and adolescents, although the majority did not skip breakfast consistently.

Those most likely to skip breakfast were older females, and people who:. While skipping breakfast is not recommended, good nutrition is not just about the number of meals you have each day.

Research has shown that schoolchildren are more likely to eat breakfast if easy-to-prepare breakfast foods are readily available at home.

Some quick suggestions include:. Whatever your reason for being time poor in the morning, there are still ways that you can fit in breakfast. This page has been produced in consultation with and approved by:.

Content on this website is provided for information purposes only. Information about a therapy, service, product or treatment does not in any way endorse or support such therapy, service, product or treatment and is not intended to replace advice from your doctor or other registered health professional.

In previous studies 30 , 35 , 51 , 59 , these factors were apparently related to obesity. For socioeconomic status, the reason may be that children in areas with poor economic conditions are more likely to skip breakfast, thus leading to obesity For smoking, people who smoke generally have poor lifestyle habits and are more likely to skip breakfast, which leads to obesity.

Children who like to watch TV and use computers for long periods of time are often sedentary, lack of activity and exercise, and are more likely to develop obesity Environments may differ from each other.

Human development levels, social factors, schools providing breakfast, and cultural differences may lead to different prevalence rates. In a study of children aged 9—16 years in twelve countries around the world, significant differences were found in Australia, Finland, and Kenya.

Horikawa et al. In our screening, there appeared to be a stronger association between eating or not eating breakfast and the risk of obesity and overweight in girls OR, 1. Women are more likely to be exposed to high-glucose environments, and the presence of a uterus may be associated with the disruption of homeostasis by glucose and increased adiposity In a previous study 71 , we identified four different neuronal populations with respect to glucose sensitivity: the non-glucose sensing NGS , glucose-exciting GE , non-adapting glucose-inhibited GI and adapting glucose-inhibited AdGI populations.

When extracellular glucose decreased, the activity of GE, non-adaptive GI, and AdGI neurons changed. More importantly that the relative percentage of glucose-sensitive subtypes AdGI, non-adaptive GI, GE, and NGS neurons within the VL-VMN was sexually dimorphic.

In women, AdGI neurons and non-adapting GI neurons occur at approximately the same proportion, while in men, AdGI neurons occur approximately half as often as non-adapting GI neurons. When glucose decreased, the degree of depolarization of male and female non-adapting GI neurons was similar, but males had 2-fold increased IR due to decreased glucose compared to female, indicating increased excitability of these neurons under low-glucose conditions, which makes females more likely to develop obesity than males Moreover, depending on cultural perception, girls may choose to eat less, which also includes skipping breakfast, mainly to maintain a thin body as a beauty standard Middle school girls who skip breakfast are more likely to report lower levels of physical activity than those who eat breakfast regularly, which may be a contributing factor.

In addition, girls with overweight and obesity may avoid exercise because they are more self-aware of their bodies The development of breakfast habits in children is closely related to the habits of parents. Children who eat breakfast differ significantly from those who do not eat breakfast in terms of diet composition.

Children who do not eat breakfast have elevated daily energy fat intake, along with a reduced intake of protein, vitamins and minerals, and a stronger appetite for fat, such as fat-rich snacks, which leads to higher total plasma cholesterol levels.

Additionally, the intake of breakfast cereals seems to play an important role. A study on adults found that those who ate cooked breakfast cereals had a significantly lower BMI than those who ate meat, eggs, dairy products, etc.

Other studies found that there is a high prevalence of overweight among people who did not eat breakfast cereals compared to those who did 74 , The mechanism of breakfast regulation in the development of obesity is very complex, and thus far, there is no clear mechanism to elucidate the relationship between them.

In reviewing previous studies, we found that the possible mechanisms are mainly as follows:. Eating breakfast regularly may result in greater metabolic function, and a fiber rich breakfast may improve postprandial glycemic response, satiety, and insulin sensitivity Second, skipping breakfast increases total energy intake.

A recent study conducted by Professor Daniela Jakubowicz elaborated on the metabolic mechanism. His team clarified that skipping breakfast has an important connection with the clock gene that could regulate the glucose level, called the insulin response, a reaction that could lower iGLP-1 and damage the insulin response.

Skipping breakfast was associated with a significantly higher post lunch and post dinner glycemic response than eating breakfast. Skipping breakfast can also lead to impaired insulin secretion after lunch and dinner, manifested by delayed insulin peaks and decreased plasma insulin and C-peptide concentrations.

In addition, after lunch and dinner, the iGLP-1 response to skipping breakfast was lower than the iGLP-1 response to eating breakfast. In contrast, plasma free fatty acid and glucagon levels were significantly elevated after lunch and dinner in response to skipping breakfast.

Therefore, breakfast is essential for glucose homeostasis throughout the day, including islet and incretin hormone function Skipping breakfast also leads to a reduction in the expressions of gene, such as Per1, Cry1, Ror, Sirt1, and Clock, which regulate the secretion of circadian hormones and postprandial glycaemia A relevant clinical trial also showed an association between overactivity in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal HPA axis, leading to disordered cortisol rhythms The possible mechanism of abdominal obesity remains uncertain.

A previous study 63 reported that people who rarely ate breakfast had lower total energy intake, but a higher body mass index than those who ate breakfast. People who typically eat breakfast consume more energy, carbohydrates, and fiber, and fat accounts for a lower percentage of the total calories; Additionally, people who eat breakfast every day appear to be more active than those who do not.

This diet has the potential to improve energy balance and possibly improve glucose and insulin parameters, leading to increased satiety and a lower prevalence of abdominal obesity.

We screened a large number of studies containing keywords such as children, breakfast, and obesity. We gradually censored and filtered them to ultimately obtain 40 articles that fit the study topic, and the results obtained were more objective and precise.

The sample size of each of the 40 articles was very large, and the obtained results were also highly credible.

Finally, the sensitivity analysis indicated that the stability of the data results was good. The limitations are that most of the included studies were cross-sectional studies that had limitations such as lack of causality and generalization.

Second, some studies were not found, and we mostly chose to exclude papers published in local languages. We only included published reports and did not search for unpublished articles.

Furthermore, some studies were very old, and there may be a slight gap between previous research results and current developments. Another potential limitation arises from the various definitions of skipping breakfast.

The criteria for skipping breakfast in the trials included in this review varied from study to study and sometimes did not allow for direct comparisons.

The findings provide support for a possible positive role of breakfast in preventing excessive obesity in children and adolescents.

However, drawing causal conclusions from the collective evidence is limited by methodological constraints and inconsistencies, including the study design, follow-up duration and frequency, exposure and outcome assessment, and limited consideration of confounding, mediating, and modifying variables.

More rigorous study designs with validated and standardized measures of relevant variables are needed. Second, the mechanisms regarding the modulation of obesity by eating breakfast remain unclear and need to be further explored.

KW, YN, ZL, and BD designed the ideas for this study. YN, ZL, BD, CE, and LG performed all the procedures and data analysis. KW wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers.

Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher. Reilly J, Kelly J. Long-term impact of overweight and obesity in childhood and adolescence on morbidity and premature mortality in adulthood: systematic review.

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