Do Big Breakfasts Create Big Waistlines?

by Jan Ellen Spiegel, Posted Jan 21st 2011 @ 3:00PM

huge breakfast plate Photo: avlxyz, Flickr

No breakfast, no weight gain? Not buying it.

That sound you hear is eyebrows rising on more than a few nutrition and obesity experts. A new German study is challenging one of the most basic and longstanding tenets about weight and eating: that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Researchers at Technical University of Munich found that people who ate more food for breakfast didn't cut their calorie intake at other meals to compensate – they simply ate more.

The researchers looked at 380 subjects -- 280 obese and 100 normal weight -- who kept track of what they ate for about two weeks. Breakfast foods varied, but when subjects, normal or obese, ate at least 400 additional calories for breakfast, they wound up eating 400 more calories for the day.

"Reduced breakfast energy intake is associated with lower total daily intake," the study's conclusion said as reported in Nutrition Journal. "The influence of the ratio of breakfast to overall energy intake largely depends on the post-breakfast rather than breakfast intake pattern. Therefore, overweight and obese subjects should consider the reduction of breakfast calories as a simple option to improve their daily energy balance."

James Hill, an obesity expert at the University of Colorado at Denver and executive director of its new Anschutz Health and Wellness Center was on the obesity epidemic warpath long before it entered the popular lexicon. He is having none of it.

"I'm not buying it on the strength of one study," he said. "There's nothing in this study that would cause me to change my advice to people that eating breakfast is one of the most important things you can do for your health and your weight."

Christie Munsell, a research assistant at the Rudd Center for Obesity at Yale University,
said she too was surprised. "It's necessary in the morning to eat in order to replenish the glucose stores we've lost overnight," she said also pointing out breakfast's role in improving mood, productivity and memory.

And she said it's not just how much you eat, it's what. The study said the additional breakfast calories came from bread, eggs, cake, yogurt, cheese, sausage, marmalade and butter -- not exactly the high fiber-plus-protein Munsell and others typically recommend.

Munsell and Hill both cited years and years of studies that show a strong relationship between eating breakfast and reducing "core intake" for the rest of the day by spreading out calories.

In fact, Hill said, in his decades of experience, many of the obese people he sees have a habit of skipping breakfast and doing most of their eating late in the day. That pattern, he said, correlates to the body storing extra calories.

"We have to bring a little bit of rational thinking to this," he said of the study. "I'm not saying go out and gorge yourself with breakfast; that's not the right thing to do. I don't think people are going gain weight because they're over-eating at breakfast."

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Filed Under: Health & Medical
Tags: breakfast, diet, obesity, weight

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

1-22-2011 @7:08AM Belinda - Healthy Affordable Weight Loss said... This is why we need way more health coaches in this country if any progress is going to be made. Not doctors, not researchers, not politicians. Health coaches are the bridge between what "the experts" say to do and what people actually do, because people don't have a filter for information given our hectic lifestyles.

Research says: Eat Breakfast to help you lose weight
People's actions: Eat a 1000 calorie breakfast
Result: People gain weight!

Research says: Eat low-fat
People's actions: Eat bread, Snackwells, fruit, and other high-glycemic but low-fat foods
Result: A skyrocketing obesity and diabetes epidemic

Research says: Eat low-carb
People's actions: Eat Bacon, steak, sausage, eggs, cheese every day
Result: Binging on carbs, regaining weight after going back to a normal diet

It's not people's faults, there's just too much confusion information and not enough help with implementation.
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1-22-2011 @9:16AM crgwbr said... Health coaches aren't the answer. People just need to have some common sense and realize that binging on any one thing, no matter how "healthy" it is, will cause problems. Instead of eating all the processed, packaged, engineered crap pushed by diets, we need to focus on eating basic, natural food that's been eaten for centuries.

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1-22-2011 @3:54PM Jimmy Cain said... Health Coaches. LOL Another idiot. Take responsibility for yourself. That breakfast in the picture looked like something someone would "slop" the hogs with. Does one need a Heath Coach to recognize hog slop?
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1-22-2011 @7:05PM Belinda - Healthy Affordable Weight Loss said... You expect people who don't know how to eat to got "eat healthy?" That's the same prescription that doctors have been giving for years, and no one's healthier for it. It's like asking a beginning skiier to go down black diamond. I guess I'm just a stupid health coach who has help over 75 people lose weight by giving them tools and compassion. How idiotic of me!

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1-22-2011 @5:18PM John Bliss said... I read your piece and the comments, but folks, it just depends on the person. An example, Mr George Burns, smoking cigars most of his life, dies at 100. Go figure. My mother had an Aunt &Uncle in Ohio, famers all their lives. That is to say, their parents were farmers too, both knew hard work, in order to live. As i watched my "Great-Aunt" cook, it was always with lard, bacon and eggs for breakfast, and my "Great-Uncle" was very lean, some might say skinny, right until he died at age 97. She followed him, a few years later at age 94. No low-fat, skim milk, in that house. Just how do you want to live?
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1-22-2011 @5:20PM Gerri said... You have to watch out for the so called healthy dishes in restaurants too. Breakfast is a hard one for me. Unless the restaurant posts their nutritiion online or an the menu you have to figure it out yourself and hope you get it right. Like how much egg whites and veggies in the omelet I ordered. I'm on a diet that I post everything online www.sparkpeople.com.
The diet is working if I stick with it.

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1-22-2011 @6:18PM AVE. JOE said... OH, IT'S OK ONCE A WEEK..BUT NOT EVERDAY!
I have my Oatmeal and 1/2 Grapefruit EOD
and A Egg Toast Sandwhich with High Fiber Bread EOD
and on the 7th day? It's the BIG One!
been doing this since I was a Kid, like my Dad..
oh, walked ave of 3 mi. EOD also

My Dad? Was 6 ft and weighed 190 lbs till age 87
I'm just like him.. at age 63 now..
I don't expect to live till 87, maybe olnly till 85, since I eat Once a Week at Either McD's or BK for Lunch on the Wknds..

And IT'S IN THE GENES-JEANS... YOU GO TFAT PARENTS? YOU'RE DOOMED..BLAME THEM..PROVEN 0VER 66% OF FAT PEOPLE HAD EITHER 1 OR BOTH FAT PARENTS AND PASSED ON THEIR FAT GENES....

AND THEY ARE BREEDING MORE AND MORE FAT KIDS AS WE SPEAK..
THE RATIO IS NOW 3 -1 THAT'S WHY WE HAVE A OBESITY PROBLEM.. MORE FAT KIDS BEING BORN THAN NORMAL SIZE KIDS..

JUST FIND AND DESTROYTHE FAT GENES IS WHAT IT TAKES..
No Diets will get the problem solved..

:-0)
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1-22-2011 @9:25PM Belinda - Healthy Affordable Weight Loss said... it's not so much genetics as it is environment. live with fat parents, grow up to be fat. hang around fat people, you'll get fat. that's why emphasizing healthy school lunch is not enough, parents have to get healthy, too. but they need tools and support that they don't have to think about too much in the beginning. if they are hrown into the world of healthy eating before they are ready, that's a recipe for failure.

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1-23-2011 @12:53AM Lee Dorsey said... I read your peace.People just need to have some common sense and realize that binging on any one thing, no matter how "healthy" it is, will cause problems.

http://www.links2rss.com/feed/853190737.xml
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1-24-2011 @9:16PM Melly said... Well obviously if you eat terrible food for breakfast you won't lose weight.
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1-26-2011 @10:38PM chuck guy said... I found skipping breakfast works for me. I knew people said not to do it but I found that eating breeakfast did not help me not eat later. So here is a study that confirms what works for me. Now I don't have to go ari=ound saying ,"Iknow its wrong but its what works form me." Now I say "It works for me and its right".

It sounds to me like all nutritionists jumped on the bandwagon and insisted there was only on way based on NO EVIDENCE. Just like global warming clowns.
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