To eat breakfast or not to eat breakfast? That is the (surprisingly hard-to-answer) question

By Sam Downing|

Is breakfast actually the most important meal of the day — or is that just a line your parents used to convince you to finish off those bowls of soggy cereal? The answer is… complicated.

It’s well-established that regularly eating breakfast is linked to better weight loss and management, so it seems reasonable to that assume skipping breakfast should make it harder to lose weight and keep it off.

But a new study suggests otherwise, finding that teenage girls who skipped breakfast didn’t end up eating more later in the day to make up for the lost meal — overall, they consumed less calories.

The study, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, didn’t conclude whether breakfast is good or bad for weight loss. Rather, it concluded we don’t know whether breakfast is good or bad for weight loss. (Science!)

“There is a common belief that breakfast is the ‘most important meal of the day’,” said the study’s co-author, Loughborough University exercise physiologist Dr Keith Tolfrey, in a statement.

“There are many reports that show missing breakfast is associated with obesity, which may have led to premature assumptions that breakfast can be used as an intervention for weight control.

“But we do not know why eating breakfast is associated with a lower likelihood of being overweight or obese, or whether eating breakfast can be used effectively as a weight control strategy.”

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The research team gathered 40 girls aged between 11 and 15 and put them on two eating plans: for three days they either ate breakfast (consisting of the British equivalent of Weet-Bix with skim milk and orange juice), or skipped breakfast.

On the days the girls missed breakfast, they ate an extra 115 calories on average (about the amount in one double-coat Tim Tam) in their later meals. But that breakfast would have accounted for about 460 calories — so overall, they ended up eating about 350 calories less by skipping breakfast.

Which doesn’t explain why frequent breakfast skippers tend to weigh more, because if they’re eating less calories overall, they should tend to weigh less.

The researchers concluded that it is indeed a puzzle.

“It’s worth noting that due to the limited evidence base we can’t definitively say how breakfast is linked to weight status and health,” said study co-author Dr Julia Zakrzewski-Fruer, a University of Bedfordshire nutrition lecturer.

“Further research will help to determine whether daily breakfast consumption can be used as an intervention to reduce future disease risk in young people.”

RELATED: No, breakfast probably isn't the most important meal of the day. Yes, you should eat it anyway.

So you’re probably left wondering whether you’re better off starting each day with a bowl of cereal or smashed avo on toast, or whether you should just skip the whole thing and hope for the best.

Nutrition science is notoriously complicated, and it’s true there isn’t a lot of scientific evidence that can definitively declare breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

But while breakfast itself won’t magically make you healthy or slim, nutrition experts who’ve spoken to Coach generally agree the meal is a valuable source of nutrients and energy, and is a foundation of a healthy lifestyle — so it’s better to eat it than not to eat it.

"Breakfast is pretty important as part of an overall balanced diet," dietitian Lauren McGuckin told Coach, while fellow dietitian Rebecca Gawthorne said “I’ve never had a client in my dietetic practice who hasn't benefited from eating breakfast.”

"From my experience, people who do eat breakfast tend to maintain their weight better and there is a lot of advantages in terms of concentration levels because you are fuelling your brain," added nutritionist Melanie McGrice.

Click here for insights on what several leading nutrition experts eat for breakfast, both when they’re in a rush and when they have time to cook a full meal.

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