Breakfast has been dubbed "the most important meal of the day."
Breakfast has also been linked to certain benefits including weight loss and boosting metabolism. However, researchers are now questioning whether breakfast might be that important, according to two trials in which people were randomly assigned to eat breakfast or not.
James Betts, one of the study's authors and a senior lecturer in nutrition and metabolism at the University of Bath in the U.K., decided to look into the research more closely after a colleague criticized his habit of skipping breakfast, according to TIME.
In one study, 33 lean adults were instructed to either eat nothing in the morning or a 700-calorie breakfast of their choice. After six weeks, researchers reportedly found that eating breakfast didn't boost metabolism.
In fact, the participants' resting metabolic rates remained the same.
Skipping breakfast didn't lead the volunteers to pig out at lunchtime either, according to the publication.
For the other study, researchers from several institutions assigned about 300 overweight and obese people to one of three groups for 16 weeks. The three groups included those instructed to eat breakfast, those told to skip it, and a control group vaguely told to have a healthy diet.
"What we found was absolutely no difference in the change of weight among the three groups, severely calling into question the idea - at least among ordinary adults - that it's important to eat a good breakfast every day for the purpose of weight control," stated David Allison, one of the study authors and distinguished professor and director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Although more research is needed to know whether breakfast is as important as everyone says it is, it is important to note that eating breakfast will most definitely help you move more.
"If you're like me and you skip breakfast, you can just use this information to be aware that you may not be as active as you otherwise would be. So you should consciously think, don't be lazy today," stated Betts.
