Breakfast is known to be the "most important meal of the day" and has been rumored to aid in weight loss, but new research suggests this claim is false.
Researchers found that regularly skipping breakfast had no effect on weight loss, a University of Alabama at Birmingham news release reported.
To make their findings the researchers looked at 92 studies that analyzed the link between breakfast and obesity. They also conducted a 16-week trial consisting of 309 otherwise-healthy obese patients between the ages of 20 and 65.
"Previous studies have mostly demonstrated correlation, but not necessarily causation," study lead author Emily Dhurandhar, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior said in the news release. "In contrast, we used a large, randomized controlled trial to examine whether or not breakfast recommendations have a causative effect on weight loss, with weight change as our primary outcome."
The study participants were asked to either eat or skip breakfast; a control group was not instructed either way but was given education on eating well.
The team did not find a connection between breakfast and weight loss.
"Now that we know the general recommendation of 'eat breakfast every day' has no differential impact on weight loss, we can move forward with studying other techniques for improved effectiveness," Dhurandhar said. "We should try to understand why eating or skipping breakfast did not influence weight loss, despite evidence that breakfast may influence appetite and metabolism."
The study was limited that it only looked at weight and was very short in duration.
"The field of obesity and weight loss is full of commonly held beliefs that have not been subjected to rigorous testing; we have now found that one such belief does not seem to hold up when tested," David Allison, Ph.D., director of the UAB Nutrition Obesity Research Center and senior investigator on the project, said in the news release. "This should be a wake-up call for all of us to always ask for evidence about the recommendations we hear so widely offered."
