Is breakfast healthy?

Is it true that breakfast is the most important meal of the day? Can you absolutely not skip this?

What does the Nutrition Center say?

According to the Nutrition Center your day starts with a breakfast full of choices from the Schijf van Vijf . Breakfast provides new energy after the night and stimulates digestion . You would also use fewer unhealthy snacks later in the day by consuming a healthy breakfast. But is this correct? The Nutrition Center's advice seems to be based on one study. What is clear from the scientific literature?

What does research say?

Several major studies have been done on this topic. A number of interesting results come from these studies:

• Breakfast does not affect weight gain 
• Breakfast does affect a lower  BMI 
• Breakfast does not affect BMI or obesity 
• Not having breakfast increases the risk of obesity 
• Whether or not breakfast has no effect on weight loss or short-term increase (16 weeks) 
• Breakfast causes a higher incineration due to physical activity in healthy adults  
• Breakfast does not affect resting metabolism 
• People who have breakfast have a more stable blood sugar level in the afternoon and evening 
• Breakfast has no influence on obesity and probably little influence on cardiovascular diseases 

The striking thing is that these studies sometimes contradict each other. This means that for the time being no conclusive advice is possible. However, we believe that the literature does show a certain trend. Breakfast may have slightly more health benefits.

The above-mentioned studies are often short-lived or do not involve experimental research, but often data that are interpreted afterwards. For that reason it is difficult to really determine whether health benefits come from breakfast or not, or caused by other factors. Furthermore, it is difficult to generalize results to children and the elderly. Future research with a longer research duration under multiple age categories should show whether a breakfast is really not as necessary as expected.

Advice

Based on the above literature, we advise people to have breakfast in the morning.

This does not mean that breakfast is necessarily necessary for good health or a good diet. Do you have trouble eating in the morning? Then try to drink a healthy smoothie or eat a few hours later.

Do you choose not to have breakfast? 

Dam it is important that you can resist unhealthy snacks later in the day. We often see that people who do not eat breakfast earlier in the morning take unhealthy snacks as compensation. Go to yourself: are you disciplined and can you cope well with an empty stomach and resist the temptation? Then not breakfast is no problem.