Why is it important to have breakfast in the morning?
In: Biology
TLDR: It isn’t.
Joke answer: Because that’s the only time you can have breakfast. If you eat it later, it’s lunch.
Full answer: If you’re referring to the expression “breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” that’s a very successful advertising line of American cereal makers. There are a few myths about the benefits of breakfast, but there is some tentative science behind it, too. I’ll address both.
One argument that is made for breakfast is that “it gives you energy for the day.” There’s a little to this: if you ate quick-digesting sugars that morning, that energy woudl be available to you that day. Most other things take longer to digest and wouldn’t be useful immediately. That said if you skip breakfast, it’s not like you don’t have energy. We have glycogen stores in our muscles and liver, and of course fat reserves we can tap. Many people report being more alert and energized while fasted, so the breakfast foods aren’t necessary for you to have energy, and in fact the slow-digesting foods may sap some of your energy during the day (as your body uses energy to digest instead of act). The effects here are rather small, so for most people it makes sense to do what feels right to them.
A related story is that if you eat breakfast, you’ll burn those calories during the day, but eating late will convert them to fat overnight. That’s generally wrong: for the most part, your net calories determine weight gain or weight loss, with some variance based on what you eat.
One other myth that exists is that eating in the morning “jump starts” your metabolism and you burn more calories during the day. This is false. Eating does raise your metabolism temporarily, as, like I said above, you need energy to digest food. This happens whenever you eat, so it’s not special about breakfast, and it doesn’t burn more calories based on when you eat.
However, science does seem to show that eating lots in the morning is the right time for many people. This is very tentative research, but for example intermittent fasters report that it’s easier to do with a morning meal rather than an evening meal, perhaps with better results. (Selection is a big issue in these trials, so we don’t really know.) It does seem like eating less in the evening lets people sleep better and also tends to avoid things like heartburn, but that’s a small effect as well.
Fan Fact:
The invention of the “breakfast story” for marketing purposes traces back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As industrialization accelerated, there was a growing need to reshape societal norms around meal times to accommodate the demands of factory work. Enterprising cereal manufacturers, like John Harvey Kellogg and C.W. Post, capitalized on this opportunity by promoting the idea that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.
Through advertising campaigns, these companies touted breakfast as essential for health, productivity, and overall well-being. They emphasized the nutritional benefits of their products, such as cornflakes and other ready-to-eat cereals, as ideal choices for a quick and nourishing morning meal. This narrative was reinforced by health professionals and even endorsed by scientific studies commissioned by the manufacturers themselves.
Over time, this marketing strategy became deeply ingrained in popular culture, influencing societal habits and perceptions about breakfast. Today, the notion that breakfast is crucial for starting the day right remains a widely accepted belief, largely due to the effective marketing efforts of early cereal manufacturers. Thus, the “breakfast story” exemplifies how marketing can shape not only consumer behavior but also cultural norms surrounding food and health.
It really isn’t. It’s important to eat nutricious food in decent amounts.. Not too much, not too little. When you eat is fairly inconsequential.
I guess as others say it really isnt, but for me it is because im always starving when i wake up
I don’t know what others are talking about but if I don’t eat breakfast and I am doing physical work I feel quite shitty till my next meal. I would feel dizzy, nauseous and weak. Even if I don’t do physical work, I would still feel like that but on a smaller scale.
So for me breakfast is indeed the most important meal of the day.
Besides I would take dietary advice with a grain of salt considering conflicting information and evidence as well as advice full of ideology and agenda.
I was watching an expert talks video on yt featuring a diet expert. Half of the shit he was saying was him being dismissive and snobbish. The other half was him saying shit that was easily disproven. He was talking about the blue zone, a list of areas with a lot of people above 100 years of age. He was claiming that they had basically a vegetarian diet and that diet allowed them to consistently live for a long period of time. Unfortunately Okinawa people aren’t really vegetarians. They love pork and eat lots of it. Only for a period of time after WW2 where a lot of pigs were lost did Okinawans drop their consumption of pork. After a couple decades consumption of pork increased once again. Not to mention diet is only one of the factors affecting health. Mental and physical stress are one of the most important factors in body health.
Lastly, even scientific results need to be taken with a grain of salt because in most cases they aren’t really scientific results. They are more assumptions or the opinion of a scientist than a proven fact. The reason for this is because it is difficult to actually do large large scale tests around these assumptions. It is also difficult to isolate the factors influencing physical health.
For some people like me, who has low blood pressure, it’s really important to eat something in the morning. I usually wake up really low and If I went out without eating I would probably pass out.
The marketing gig by companies does hold true and they did stress eating breakfast was important.
Regardless, it is still an important meal of the day and some nutrients should be consumed if not a heavy meal.
One important reason is that if you go w/o it, at lunch you’re going to consume far more, and it’s linked to weight gain.
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