Skipping breakfast does not influence weight loss or weight gain: Study

People and even some of the experts suggest altering breakfast habits to encourage weight gain or loss, but what if that is not applicable in any ways? Here is an outlook of a recent study, which discovered that skipping your morning meal may neither increase nor decrease your weight.

The study was conducted in University of Alabama at Birmingham, suggests that comparing ‘skipping breakfast’ with ‘regular consumption of breakfast’ would indicate uninfluenced weight. There were no outcomes through earlier analysis done to determine whether skipping or eating breakfast affects body weight – though there was a link already determined between breakfast and weight of the body.

Those who are keen on shedding their surplus pounds are often suggested not to skip breakfast and on contrary some people believe that skipping breakfast would help them avert some calories. However, this latest study has a different tale to tell – a declaration that matches neither of the aforementioned theories.

According to the Dietary Guidelines of Americans, nutrient dense morning meals promotes weight manage benefits and caloric balance in the body. On the other hand, not eating breakfast is associated with weight gain. David Allison and his team from University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Public Health, suggests that studies focused on determine link between obesity and breakfast habits usually do not provide sufficient evidence that breakfast and weight has reciprocal effects.

This was a multisite 16 weeks long trial conducted on 309 volunteers. These individuals were otherwise healthy but were obese and aged between 20 years and 65 years. Volunteers were divided in groups and were instructed to either skip or eat breakfast regularly. However, the control groups were merely informed on nutritional information and not emphasis on breakfast they should or should not consume.

Andrew Brown, Ph.D and the first author of this new study called PEBO (Proposed Effect of Breakfast on Obesity), recently published an online article in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. He suggested that PEBO seem to be affected with factors that caused exaggerated beliefs on proposed effect of consumption of breakfast on the body – this includes probatory values and prejudiced research reporting.

Probatory values are the degree to which a study can pass knowledge forward from the current state of affair. The authors explicates that probatory values of a particular study may decrease, as similar studies are extremely repeated.

Prejudice research reporting is said to distort findings of research in certain ways that inclines the outcomes to a certain hypothesis beyond what is supported by the data. According to Brown, the published article overstates the potential of design of the study. He also states that there were certain evidences which were ignored; these evidences were contrary to PEBO study.

Emily Dhurandhar Ph. D and lead author of the study says it was significant to examine general common suggestions to eat breakfast in order to ensure that this message was efficacious but not misleading about factors that would help people lose weight. She says there was not considerable effect of regimen on weight loss. Dhurandar adds, “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. We should try to understand why eating or skipping breakfast did not influence weight loss, despite evidence that breakfast may influence appetite and metabolism.”

Emily Dhurandhar also found certain limitations of the study. She highlights that the study was only focused on measuring body weight as the result. This explains that experts cannot confirmedly conclude anything on influence of breakfast (breakfast quantity) on appetite or detailed effect on metabolism or body fat measurement.

David Allison says that obesity and weight loss are subjects flooded with common beliefs that have not yet been scrutinized with rigorous testing. He says “We have now found that one such belief does not seem to hold up when tested. This should be a wake-up call for all of us to always ask for evidence about the recommendations we hear so widely offered.”.

The authors of the study declared that if there is a need of causal claims then further research is needed on the subject. There is a need of a fortified study design with randomized instructions and evaluation of people who eat and skip breakfast. It is also announced that UAB is leading many such trials in approx 300 volunteers and in five different sites throughout the world; results of these evaluations are due in spring 2014.