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Regularly Eating Breakfast Reduces Weight Gain

Breakfast frequency and BMI are inversely associated.

The association between eating breakfast and body weight has been explored in cross-sectional studies and in several small prospective cohort studies. In a 5-year prospective study, investigators in Minnesota examined the association between breakfast eating patterns on self-reported BMI and weight changes in 2216 adolescents (55% girls, 63% white) at the mean age of 15 and again at 19.

In cross-sectional analyses, adolescents who ate breakfast daily had lower BMIs than those who never or intermittently ate breakfast. In prospective analyses, the inverse association between breakfast frequency at age 19 and change in BMI from age 15 (adjusted for BMI and breakfast frequency at age 15) was significant (5-year increase in BMI, 1.6 kg/m² among daily breakfast eaters vs. 2.0 and 2.2 among intermittent and never-eaters, respectively). In analyses that adjusted for dietary, psychosocial, and other confounding variables, the relation between breakfast frequency and BMI change was similar but did not reach statistical significance.

Comment: These results indicate that missing breakfast is associated with weight gain, although the loss of statistical significance after adjustment for other variables suggests some uncertainty about the strength of this association. My mother always told me that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. As a child, I never believed her. As a parent, I now tell my children the same thing.

— Howard Bauchner, MD

Published in Journal Watch Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine March 19, 2008

Citation(s):

Timlin MT et al. Breakfast eating and weight change in a 5-year prospective analysis of adolescents: Project EAT (Eating Among Teens). Pediatrics 2008 Mar; 121:e638. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2007-1035)

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