Regularly consuming or skipping breakfast does not affect weight loss

A new research led by the University of Alabama at Birmingham shows that, when comparing regularly consuming with regularly skipping breakfast, weight loss is not influenced.

Past breakfast research, including an examination of 92 studies about the proposed effect of breakfast on obesity also performed at UAB, has found that, while an association exists between breakfast and weight management, the question of whether eating versus skipping breakfast causes differences in weight has not been answered by research, until now.

The new study examined the impact of a recommendation to eat or skip breakfast, and the impact of switching breakfast eating habits for the study, on weight loss in adults trying to independently lose weight.

Study lead author Emily Dhurandhar, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior, said that it was important to test the common recommendation to eat breakfast to ensure this public health message was effective and not misleading about what will and will not help with their weight loss efforts.

"Previous studies have mostly demonstrated correlation, but not necessarily causation," Dhurandhar said.

"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," she said.

This multisite, 16-week trial enrolled 309 otherwise healthy overweight and obese adults, 20-65 years old. Experimental groups were told to eat or skip breakfast. The control group, consisting of breakfast eaters and skippers, was simply provided healthy nutrition information that did not mention breakfast.

Dhurandhar said that there was no identifiable effect of treatment assignment on weight loss.

The study is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.