Here's an article from Medscape regarding a study showing that there's no real benefit to eating breakfast when it comes to losing weight. In other words - breakfast may not be the most important meal of the day and skipping it doesn't necessarily mean you'll eat more calories later on:
"Despite long-held beliefs and widespread medical recommendations, breakfast does not appear to have an important role in weight loss after all, with a new meta-analysis showing no evidence that eating breakfast reduces daily caloric intake and weight gain is no worse among those who skip the meal.
"While breakfast has been advocated as the most important meal of the day in the media since 1917, there is a paucity of evidence to support breakfast consumption as a strategy to achieve weight loss, including in adults with overweight or obesity," the authors conclude.
"This systematic review of randomized controlled trials examining weight change in adults consuming or skipping breakfast found no evidence to support the notion that breakfast consumption promotes weight loss or that skipping breakfast leads to weight gain," they add.
In their meta-analysis, Katherine Sievert and colleagues with the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, evaluated data from 13 randomized controlled trials, including seven that examined the effect of eating breakfast on weight change (n = 486) and 10 that examined the effect on energy intake (n = 930).
The study was published today in BMJ.
Although there was some inconsistency between studies, overall there was a very small difference in weight favoring participants who skipped breakfast (mean difference, 0.44 kg).
Meanwhile, studies in which participants were assigned to eat breakfast showed they had a higher total daily energy intake than those allocated to skip breakfast (mean difference, 259.79 kcal/day), contrary to theories that not consuming breakfast leads to over-compensation later in the day.
“There was no evidence that skipping breakfast was associated with an increased total daily caloric intake,” say Sievert and colleagues.
In an accompanying editorial, Tim Spector, MD, professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College, London, UK, notes that the "disadvantages of skipping breakfast have now been debunked by several randomized trials," which are examined in the current meta-analysis.
The conclusions were the same as in recent, largely ignored qualitative reviews, he adds, "namely, that no evidence supports the claim that skipping breakfast makes you gain weight or adversely reduces your resting metabolic rate."
Importantly, the overall data underscore that metabolism may simply be more of an individualized concept than has previously been realized, and a "one size fits all" approach may be futile, he says.
Low Quality Studies Included, Interpret Findings With Caution
In their article, Sievert and colleagues explain that much of the previous research linking consumption of breakfast with healthy weight is based on observational studies, but those studies may have important caveats in terms of participants' lifestyle."
The article suggests that there's evidence that fasting may be beneficial for losing weight and that the gut microbiome also play a role.
You can access the entire article via the following link:
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/908403?src=wnl_edit_tpal&uac=279348AG&impID=1873365&faf=1
I've read other books and articles suggesting that the gut is one of the most important organs we have and our microbiome determines greatly how healthy we are and how good we feel.