Breakfast: The most important meal

Some recent reports, though, might make you think Mom’s take on breakfast is about as credible as other old wives’ tales.

Q. If I want to lose weight, why not skip breakfast? After all, two meals have fewer calories than three.

A. The desire to lose weight is one of the most frequently cited reasons for skipping breakfast. But many observational studies have found that people who skip breakfast are more likely to be overweight. The theory is that they more than make up for the missed calories in the morning by eating more at lunch or snacking all day.

“Overall, there’s still a similar intake or a lesser intake (of calories) over the whole day,”

Krista Casazza, PhD, RD.

Another small randomized trial published by Cornell University researchers in Physiology & Behavior in 2013 found that college students ate about 145 calories more at lunch when they ate nothing in the morning than they did on a day when they ate breakfast. Considering that their breakfasts averaged about 625 calories, skipping it still resulted in a savings of about 450 calories by day’s end, according to the study.