Does the widespread saying that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” hold any truth?
The believe that breakfast is the most important meal is now so ingrained into modern culture that like most nutritional beliefs we never question if this FACT is accurate or how it came into existence. The word itself, “breakfast”, simply means breaking the fast from the last meal the evening before… generally a 10 -12 hour period. From this definition we are really talking about time of the first meal… whenever that happens.
Fact or Fake:
It is crucial to understand how this modern fact came into existence. It is not fact at all but rather a slogan! Seventh Day Adventists James Caleb Jackson and John Harvey Kellogg invented “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” in the mid 19th century to sell their newly developed breakfast cereal foodstuffs. That’s right no science just the food industry making money.
Kellogg was incredibly eccentric with his thoughts about breakfast believing that bland food would curb masturbation. This is not really that surprising when you look into this period of time and all the other extremely strange human/scientific thought.
Evolution & Biology:
The modern day concept of breakfast is misguided. Professor Terence Kealey states “humans did not naturally eat in the morning. As a result, our body provides a spike in blood sugar to cope with the natural fast we have. So if we eat breakfast (which in our society is usually full of carbs (i.e. sugar) and other foods of low nutritional value) then our blood sugar levels rocket up, which also increases our insulin resistance, eventually leading to fat gain and type 2 diabetes”.
The promoters of Intermittent Fasting rationalise that eating breakfast increases your hunger throughout the day and makes it more likely for you to eat more calories throughout the whole day. Other analysts have stated, many of the studies which try to prove that breakfast is good for us are flawed for two reasons: firstly, they are nearly always funded by Kelloggs or similar, and secondly, they are based on correlation and not causation.
Body Expert Systems Breakfast Recommendations:
Here at Body Expert Systems we believe that no one meal is more important than another. However, how you start your day is extremely important, as this sets your body and auto-regulatory system up to either burn fat or store fat. The time of eating really is all about body composition and how you feel. Health can be taken care of by simply giving the body all the vitamins and minerals it needs regardless of the time you consume them.
Therefore, calories are not important in the morning for optimal health and ideal body composition. For us it is a focus on nutrients in particular vitamins, minerals and water. With this in mind conventional breakfasts are absolutely terrible for us.
3 of the most common types of breakfast are juices/juicing, refined breads/pastries and cereals. Despite juices (or juicing) being a good source of antioxidants and vitamins, they often pack in more natural sugar than a cola. One glass of orange juice is made from 7 – 10 oranges… would you eat that many oranges in one go? Refined pastry’s & breads like toast, croissants, muffins and pancakes are also common breakfast choices, but they are pure empty calories. Zero nutrients and lots of sugar is the perfect fat storing first meal. Then there’s the “WHOLE GRAIN” OR “HIGH FIBER” COLD CEREALS. Don’t let claims like “made with whole grains” or “high fibre” fool you. Research from Harvard published in Public Health Nutrition suggests whole-grain indicates that the food is rich in sugar, sodium and higher in calories.
Whether you eat breakfast or not you must be hydrated and provide the nutrients you body requires! Our body holds stored energy, in the form of fat; why not use that in the morning to fuel activity. Provide your system the essentials it needs to thrive (water, vitamins and minerals) to break the fast (breakfast) and then feed yourself the best type of calories once you’ve been moving around for a little bit. How you set up your day should be a result of what you want to achieve and your personal preferences but ideal health comes down to more than whether you have breakfast or not. It is clear that the conventional concept of breakfast is based on lie and that our biology and evolution suggests there are better routines and many more options when considering both a healthy and fat loss start to the day.
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