To breakfast or not to breakfast?

"There's this big myth, everybody knows that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, it is completely entrenched ... People who don't eat breakfast do so with this sense of guilt that they're not being healthy. But it just never made sense to me to get people to eat when they are not hungry." Professor Flavia Cicuttini, Nutritionist

"one factor associated with an increased risk of obesity is 'low rates of breakfast consumption'" Australian Guidelins for Nutrition

The above two quotes are from a recent article in the AFR on whether we should eat breakfast or not. I have to say that in spite of my own natural tendency not to eat breakfast - other than a cup of coffee to give me a kick start - I am with the professor in that I have always felt bad about not liking breakfast. Like not wanting to get up early in the morning as well. My mother and I would have shouting matches every morning over me getting up in time to have a good cooked breakfast - rather like the one on the left but without the healthy fruit and fruit juice, and with the addition of fried bread - yes fried bread. (a) I didn't want to get up and reckoned I had it worked out to the last second how much time I needed for the morning routine (and it only failed once), and (b) I really didn't like eating first thing in the morning. Now I can eat that kind of breakfast - indeed any kind of breakfast (except cereal and milk) if I have first had the time to wake myself up with a shower in my own time. Not that that is a luxury in which you can indulge when you are working or have children. And these days if we are away on holiday I do indulge.

But my husband too is a believer in the virtue of breakfast - it's his favourite meal - and he more or less insists that I have some, although he has caved in on quantity and it is generally just a small piece of toast and jam that he brings me with my coffee. And yes I am lucky and spoiled - but also, quite unintentionally, it makes me feel bad. For unless it is a fasting day he would be upset I think if I had nothing. I am also absolutely convinced that both my mother and husband were and are doing this out of love and concern. But left to my own devices I would get up and have a shower when properly awake, and then settle down to breakfast - most likely a continental kind of breakfast.

There is also a lot of publicity about the importance of breakfast for children. So much so that breakfast clubs have been formed at some primary schools to provide children from disadvantaged homes with a good breakfast to start the day. So, I also gave my children breakfast - in those days it was weetbix and other cereals with milk - very easy to prepare by a mother who took a long time to wake up. These days our grandchildren are usually regaled with toast and honey - which they love - when they come to stay.

weetbix

toast and honey

So very possibly, deep in my heart of hearts I too believe in breakfast.

In recent years breakfast has become big - I mean big. You can buy it on your way to work - a cup of coffee and a muffin at the station - or stop at a café and eat some kind of trendy breakfast bowl or dish. You can get breakfast all day in thousands of Melbourne cafés. Every cookery book and magazine always has at least one recipe for something breakfasty, from the above kind of breakfast bowl to pancakes, waffles, poached eggs and avocado. All supposedly healthy. And perhaps they are, but think of the calories. Although, of course, the proponents would say you need the calories to get you going. In lots of ways we have come to think that breakfast is essential.

So I am cheered to see that there is a growing body of opinion that says no. Apart from the idea expressed at the top of the page "it just never made sense to me to get people to eat when they are not hungry", there is also the 'new' 800 calorie diet from Michael Mosley which is an extension of the idea, expressed to me by my local GP's nurse, that it is a good idea to go without food for 12 hours and skipping breakfast is the obvious meal to miss.

"Most of us, we rarely go more than 12 hours without eating. We are designed to run on fat but most of us never get into that state because we are constantly eating and constantly eating a lot of carby stuff." Dr. Michael Mosley

The idea, akin to the 5/2 diet which I have found to be successful, is that if you fast your body starts to consume the stored fat in your body. Which has to be good doesn't it? And considering that you have probably eaten your dinner by 8.00 or 9.00 in the evening, then it should be relatively easy to delay eating until lunchtime or morning snack time if you really can't make it to lunch. 12 hours fasting easily done. Mind you I think my GP's nurse advice to do it every day is possibly a bit extreme. Maybe you should just delay breakfast. A little tricky to do if you are working I guess, but most workers have a morning break - so eat then. Or take breakfast in with you and eat it at your desk - coffee and a muffin for example. Dr. Mosley apparently just has a late breakfast. I'm not sure that I agree with his 800 calorie diet though - i.e. 800 calories every day. It seems a tiny bit extreme. And let me say that he is merely popularising theories propounded by genuine scientific research.

There are lots of people who disagree of course. I found one site that insisted that fat was essential at breakfast and even went as far as suggesting you put some butter in your coffee if you really didn't want to eat anything. Ugh is all I can say to that.

"Although caffeine suppresses appetite, skipping breakfast slows down your metabolism—which means your "healthy" habit is detrimental to your well-being. Instead, kick-start your day and your metabolism with a bit of fat, which also has an added benefit of prolonging your caffeine buzz." Wonder How To

And there are those Australian Nutritional Guidelines - the British too - that say that obesity is a result of no breakfast. How can that be I ask? Well possibly they think that if you don't eat breakfast you compensate by eating more at other meals. Not true I think. I personally think that people who overeat, overeat all the time. And that includes me sometimes.

I'm going to give the last words to Nigella who is definitely not a scientist, and who has, from time to time, put on weight and gone on diets. But what she says is common sense surely?

"Calorie intake is crucial. I shouldn't need to say this, it is both so obvious and has been known, and scientifically proven, for so long, but since every contemporary dietary trend is against it, you do need to be reminded and you do need to take note: if your energy intake in the form of calories exceeds your energy expenditure - what it is to keep you going, plus any exercise you want to take to boost it - then you will put on weight, if the latter exceeds the former, you will lose weight. It can't - pending findings, rather than wishful theories, to the contrary - not work. Everyone has their pet excuse, their alternative explanations: it's metabolism, what you eat with what, the intrinsic properties of certain foods, or all down to allergies and intolerances ...

Put at its plainest, we know that what makes us fat is eating too much, but that says nothing about why we might eat too much, why we get fat, that we might find it difficult to lose those self-destructive, self-sabotaging habits." Nigella Lawson

I think when Malcolm Turnbull was asked how he lost weight a few years ago he simply replied "I ate less".

Whether it matters at what time of day you do that eating is possibly a moot point. But I just cannot rid myself of that nagging feeling that I should eat breakfast.