Subscribe by Email
As a very good friend of mine commented on the previous post, I usually don’t have breakfast. I used to, when I was a child or a teen living with my grandmother, who prepared it for me (usually cereal), but I haven’t had that habit for years. In fact, I don’t understand how other people can even eat solid food just after getting out of bed; not only am I absolutely not hungry (until a few hours later), but the very idea of swallowing something solid feels… almost, but not quite, painful.
And yet, since childhood, I’ve been hearing and reading: “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” My question is: why?
The idea I had, and still have, is that most people here would reply with one or more of the following:
- because you need energy / nutrients for the morning
- because otherwise you’ll be starving an hour or two later, and will probably snack on far less healthy food
- because otherwise you’ll be starving at lunch, and will then eat too much
- because not eating for so long a time is “bad” for you (why? how?)
- “I couldn’t do anything in the morning without it”
- because “the body needs it” (without any justification)
- “just because”
- “duh, everyone knows it”
Number 6 is circular logic, numbers 7 and 8 are childish, and 5 is a personal experience which doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone. 4 is unexplained, so it doesn’t really say anything. So what about the first three? Well, I can say that 2 and 3 really don’t apply to me; I never eat snacks in mid-morning, nor do I spend the entire morning craving food, nor am I starving at lunchtime. In fact, I think that the few times I did eat breakfast, I was actually more hungry at midday.
Energy… well, my current job is not very demanding, so maybe things would be different if it were, but I’m really not like many people I know, the “I can’t think or do anything until I’ve had breakfast and coffee” kind. This morning, without a real breakfast, I’ve exercised (while being completely out of shape), went to work, came back home for lunch, had a nice (not huge) green salad with bits of ham, and here I am at work again, not starving or feeling depleted.
Anyway, I googled for “why breakfast is important”, and read through the first five results. The justifications were always the first three on the list above, nothing more. Nope, that’s really not me.
Now, admittedly, I’m weird. 
But, well, here’s a challenge to you: please tell me, in a comment, why having breakfast is important. The challenge is this: don’t use a variant of the above 8 answers. (Exception: if you can justify answer 4, it’s acceptable.) If you know of another good reason, please let me know. Links to nutritional / medical information are welcome.
Note that I’m not doubting accepted medical wisdom; I simply find the explanations I’ve found so far to be either non-explanatory, or not applying to me, as far as I can see. Which is why I’m asking for a better explanation. I’m like this: I need to understand things, instead of accepting them on faith.
More about breakfast in the next post…
Related posts:
- Trial #1: having breakfast, for a change Because I claim to be relatively open-minded, and also because...
- Slightly nauseated :( I don’t necessarily blame my first solid breakfast in months...
- Initial thoughts on Intermittent Fasting, after one day It’s much too early to speak about results, of course....
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Tags: Breakfast
My writen english sucks but I have a theory… but without a link.
Gastric acid. If a person with a ulcer should not eat every 3 or 4 hours because gastric “destroy” the walls (?) of the stomach that will reconstrate every 3 days, if you eat each 3 or 4 hours.
So you should eat breakfast in the morning… and eat at least more 4 or 5 times.
I must admite, I can’t eat solid food just after getting out of bed. So I drink a glass of low fat milk or an yogurt.
Thanks for the reply; and, yes, that makes some sense (so why is that not mentioned in any of the articles I googled for?!?).
However, if a glass of milk (soy milk, in my case) counts as “breakfast”, then I already have breakfast every day.
Ok bud, here’s a link for you:
http://medicinapreventiva.pt/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=2
Mainly the “Não acho importante” part and “Como?”
For me, breakfast is very import for one simple reason: I’m usually starving when I wake up
But don’t feel lonely, sitting at my side at this very moment is a person just like you — my girlfriend can not eat anything solid in the morning too.
In a lighter but not whiter tone (actually quite reddish), the peasants in the north of Portugal had (and many still have) a very harsh life, filled with lot of work and just a little money for a decent meal. A common breakfast for the farmers (unfortunately the habit is disappearing in the sands of time due to the western way of living, the proper and standardised way of doing things) is to have in the early morning, before toiling, a very unique breakfast. They put stale bread in a bowl, fill the bowl with red wine and wait a bit until the bread soaks the wine and add a bit of sugar and thus gaining immense strength to face the hard day’s work the cold and reality. Wine is nourishment. Always was and always will be. And no, you cannot deny it because in vino veritas. Or ” נכנס יין יצא סוד ” as they say in the Babylonian Talmud.
For more information please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine#Health_effects
Can I do it without the bread and the sugar?
I get up and soon after I have breakfast. I’m used to it and unlike you I do feel hungry in the morning. Also I have to follow a food plan that consists in having 6 to 8 daily meals. The idea is for me to eat less but more often. In a way I can say that I eat in the morning because my doctors tell me to do so.
For instance I can do without drinking any coffee. Instead I drink skimmed milk or black tea and I always eat some bread with butter or cheese or strawberry jam.
Today a medical doctor answered me to your question. If you don’t eat breakfast, your body will be more susceptible to diseases from people you find on the street in the morning, such as tuberculoses.
And what if I drive to work?
I have one question…
why would you put your body in situation where he is without any energy source for probably 10h+ and you even ask him to exercise?
Bare in mind that your body will always try to compensate your errors. Always! Until the day he just can’t do it.
Pedro (nice name), I know you’re just trying to help, but can it be that everybody here, due to your own personal experiences, just can’t grasp the possibility that I really, really wake up in the morning without the smallest shred of hunger or weakness? Do you think I wake up hungry but don’t eat because of some weird “principle”?
These past days, when I’ve eaten breakfast (due to my first trial, not because I was hungry), I wouldn’t have been able to exercise after breakfast; I’d be feeling heavy and bloated, much like you would if you tried to exercise after a very heavy lunch (say, a feijoada, or a cozido à portuguesa). That’s exactly how I feel after a single egg, or a slice of bread, or a bit of cheese or yoghurt, in the morning. Bloated.
Maybe it’ll change in time if I keep, dutifully, almost forcing myself to eat in the morning. But, so far, I have exactly zero evidence that I (as opposed to “people in general”) need breakfast.
When i wake up i’m not hungry either. For a few years, lunch was my first meal of the day (when i was in university), and i was not hungry in the morning. But one day i started to have breakfast (milk with wholemeal cereals and fruit), at first i was full all morning and i didn’t see any difference. As time went by, specially on focus, health and energy wise i did noticed the difference.
I might add that one week is not enough, i would say probably a month, because your body needs time to adjust, after all he has been without it for years.
And one shouldn’t exercise after breakfast, or after any “heavy” meal. You probably should exercise before the breakfast and just drink water and a cracker before the exercise, but you shouldn’t skip breakfast.
Now, why do i say that your body always compensate? Because my body always did with my bad habits on using the computer until it just gave in to RSI.
OK, I’ll extend the test (that was already my intention, anyway). It’s just that I don’t see my mornings as any less “productive” than the rest of the day, unlike many people I know, who absolutely can’t function (”don’t talk to me!!!”) before breakfast and / or coffee.
I wasn’t talking of mornings only, the improvements i felt where during the whole day/night.
And if you don’t see any improvements, you can always go back to not having breakfast
.
Good luck for your challenge.