Experts are divided on the importance of breakfast.

Experts are now questioning whether breakfast is as significant as we are led to believe — or even if it would actually be healthier to skip it.

Some studies have shown that those who go without food in the morning eat fewer calories over the whole day, but also lack energy as a result — while other research reveals that eating breakfast kickstarts our metabolism.

Dr James Betts, a senior lecturer in Nutrition, Metabolism and Statistics at the University of Bath, and Dr Enhad Chowdhury, also from the university, have been studying the effects of eating (or skipping) breakfast and published their findings on The Conversation.

Does skipping breakfast actually make you eat more?

Skipping breakfast has been found to cause the brain to be more responsive to more “tasty” foods and usually leads people to eat more at lunchtime.

However, in more realistic investigations involving people going about their normal routines, most studies show that skipping breakfast results in people consuming less calories over the course of the day when compared to someone who has eaten at breakfast.

Taking the above into account, Dr Betts and Dr Chowdhury concluded that despite greater hunger during the morning and some compensation during lunch, the effect of skipping breakfast doesn’t seem great enough to make people go overboard on the day’s calories overall.

Toast or muesli for breakfast? It’s may not be that simple.Source:News Corp Australia

Breakfast ‘kick starts’ your metabolism — true or false?

Eating sets off a variety of processes in the human body (including the digestion and storing of food) and this leads to us ‘burning off’ energy — this is known as diet induced thermogenesis (DIT) and means that breakfast does indeed kick start your metabolism.

A recent study has shown that the increase in energy expenditure is more prominent in the morning than the evening — but there is a problem when it comes to this “jump start” offsetting the calories in your breakfast.

DIT accounts for the amount of food you eat — which is a normal diet it’s only about 10% of energy intake and even at its greatest might only account for about 15% of what you eat.

But there might be more to this than just the increased metabolism due to digestion. Evidence published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; found that those assigned to eat breakfast burned more energy through exercise (especially in the morning) than those who didn’t eat it.

This seems to suggest that skipping breakfast makes people feel less energetic, meaning they end up reducing their overall levels of physical activity — without realising it.

Breakfast in the jar.Source:istock

Thinking beyond weight

When it comes to weight loss versus breakfast, it’s important to take into consideration what you are actually eating for the meal.

Depending on who you ask, breakfast could be anything from a banana, to a slice of toast, to a full English — and research examining how different types of breakfast affect the body is still ongoing.

Depending on the type, Dr James and Dr Chowdhury say that it’s possible that eating breakfast may make you more likely to consume recommended amounts of certain nutrients.

Breakfast also acts as fuel for any sport someone may do and there is also evidence that eating breakfast can improve performance when it comes endurance exercise.

Other benefits of eating breakfast could include helping the body to regulate blood glucose concentration — while skipping it has been shown to increase high blood sugar following a meal in people with type 2 diabetes.

So, should you eat breakfast?

Dr James and Dr Chowdhury concluded that the prevailing “public wisdom” suggests that you should eat breakfast.

However, they added: “The current state of scientific evidence means that, unfortunately, the simple answer is: I don’t know. It depends.

“Whether you are a religious breakfast consumer or a staunch skipper, keep in mind that both sides might have some merit and the answer is probably not as simple as you’ve been led to believe.”