Skipping breakfast may not lead to weight gain: Study

It's a common saying and belief that skipping breakfast can lead to weight gain, but now new research is proving that may not be the case.

Researchers at the University of Alabama sought to determine whether or not skipping breakfast would cause someone to lose less weight.  

"Previous studies have mostly demonstrated correlation, but not necessarily causation," said study author Emily Dhurandhar, assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior at University of Alabama Birmingham. "In contrast, we used a large, randomized controlled trial to examine whether or not breakfast recommendations have a causative effect on weight loss, with weight change as our primary outcome."

The study included over 300 overweight and obese individuals, who were put into two groups - those who would eat breakfast, and those who would not. Researchers found that after four months, both groups had lost about the same amount of weight.

However, researchers still recommend not skipping what many call the most important meal of the day. 

"Now that we know the general recommendation of 'eat breakfast every day' has no differential impact on weight loss, we can move forward with studying other techniques for improved effectiveness," Dhurandhar says. "We should try to understand why eating or skipping breakfast did not influence weight loss, despite evidence that breakfast may influence appetite and metabolism."

There are limitations to the study as it only measured body weight as an outcome. Therefore, Dhurandhar says they cannot conclude anything about the impact of breakfast recommendations on appetite or more detailed measures of body fat or metabolism.

"In addition, our study was 16 weeks in duration, which is longer than many previous studies; but it is not clear whether an effect of the recommendation would be clearer from an even longer duration study," Dhurandhar says. "Finally, we gave subjects a recommendation of what a healthy breakfast is, but left their choices of breakfast foods up to their discretion."