Personally I like to have breakfast at my first break at 10am, so I’m fasting for longer each day. I’m not that far off 40, and if I’m honest I probably don’t need an evening meal either.
Yeah I came here to make the same observation, this article is, as most things on HN, very US-centric. Being a european I've mostly eaten granola, porridge, müsli or sandwiches with cheese and meat for breakfast. But I've still always heard that breakfast is an important meal, without any association to cereal.
Just the fact that I'm hungry in the morning when I wake up should be an indicator.
I always thought the focus on breakfast came from our peasant roots. My ancestors were field workers and eating a huge breakfast + lunch made sense from an energy input standpoint.
That's another factor that this summary (and possibly the cited research) ignores. What do you do before lunch? The two people in the video appear to be knowledge workers.
I'm in the UK, and since being a kid I've always heard "breakfast is the most important meal of the day". This was never specifically about cereal, but that's what most kids in the UK eat for breakfast - especially given at the time we were all told fat was evil, and would basically kill us.
Nowadays I don't eat breakfast, as it helps control my weight, and TBH I don't miss it. When I started doing this, I thought about those "truths" I'd been fed as a kid, and suspected they came out of paid-for pseudoscience. A year or so ago I actually looked into this, and sure enough, all these claims about breakfast are from studies sponsored by Kellogs, other cereal brands, or companies closely associated with them.
Governments base policy on these kind of claims, and over time they become unquestioned "truths" - paid-for, corporate science shilling really is an absolute fucking scourge on society.
I know we have come full circle with regard to protein and fats, but having that much fried food all at once doesn't seem like a the most healthy thing.
It usually comes with baked beans - the sauce has a high sugar content.
I don't eat particularly healthily myself, but saying full-English is healthy just sounds like nonsense.
It is healthy-ish, depending exactly what you have, how you cook it and quantity and how frequently you have it. The healthy version will look significantly different than the greasy spoon version dripping in oil.
I’ll do a full english with scrambled eggs, sourdough toast, mushrooms in a little butter, home cooked beans, 2 rashers of rindless bacon with a tiny amount of oil fried or grilled, maybe a slice of black pudding, I may even put avocado on the toast.
> if you’ve been eating breakfast to stave off weight gain, researchers are increasingly learning that breakfast might have the opposite of the desired effect — it can promote more calorie consumption and weight gain.
Ensemble averaging has not worked well for me when it comes to dieting. I’m at a point where I’ve found what works well for me: high protein Mediterranean eat when I’m hungry. I tried skipping breakfast and wound up being skinny-fat. I tried keto and got fat and muscular. You might fit cleanly into a bin, like me, you might not.
Typically it's more like thin but with poor muscle definition. Not overweight but not fit.
But assuming the gp was exercising with weights etc, they might mean that they felt they weren't overweight but were carrying excess fat in certain areas, or considered themselves bloated.
I believe it's using "fat" as a catch-all term for an unhealthy body composition. You appear skinny but lack muscle. I don't think you necessarily have to have "hidden" excess fat to be called this term.
Nutritional guidelines have very short lives compared to every other field of science. It's such a minefield of contradictions.
Astonished how many pretend a topic so complicated by biology/genetics and routinely proven wrong can be easily broken down into simplistic good/bad buckets (and of course they definitely got it right this time)
Saturated fats and salt are next in line to fall, despite how hard the entrenched old guard of health authorities want to ignore the new evidence.
<< Nutritional guidelines have very short lives compared to every other field of science. It's such a minefield of contradictions. >>
I live in Europe and the promoted diet has always been the same: More fruits and vegetables, less animal products, less fat, less sugar, less processed food, not too much food in general in order to stay lean.
IMO the next change might be general promotion of vitamin and essential fatty acid supplements (notably linseeds or linseed oil).
Diet studies are some of the most corrupt in American science, given the huge amount of money at stake based on what the American public eats. It’s not unusual to discover that the academic who releases a study proclaiming the magical power of <Food Group> is actually receiving money from the <Food Group> association.
Lifestyles and activity levels have dramatically changed. Eating breakfast everyday and consuming high levels of carbohydrates is actually a good idea, if you do manual labor on a farm.
Western lifestyles are relatively sedentary, yet our brains are consuming more information than ever. Mental processes have nutritional needs and we're stabbing in the dark as to how to approach this problem. People have not figured out the best regimen for this new lifestyle.
Last time I read an article, it was "Death of the Calorie". That article tries to imply that simple counting "calories" doesn't actually measure health's correlation to "diets".
Don't confuse unsupported with no scientific basis. The scientific method allows for making hypothesis that are later demonstrated to be false. It can absolutely be the case that the old recommendations were the best we knew at the time from science, and be unsupported today.
>It can absolutely be the case that the old recommendations were the best we knew at the time from science, and be unsupported today.
It can also absolutely be the case that old recommendations were a mix of old wives tales (with no scientific basic whatsoever), bad papers (replicated and taken as gospel without reproducibility and further study) and studies sponsored by the food industry to promote this or that foodstuff...
Dietary science performs so ridiculously poorly compared to every other branch of science, that I can't simply chalk it up to the inherent nature of scientific progress. There are a lot of variables and complex systems, yes, but you get whiplash from the way so many of these hypotheses turn out to be absolute bullshit every few years. Really the lesson should be that no one should place much confidence at all in any of these ideas until they've actually been supported by many sources for a very, very long time. Branding these things as "current scientific knowledge" is exactly the kind of thing that gets people doubting science, and it's an insult to the rest of science.
No, the saturated fat argument was pure bullshit from day 1. Ansel Keys cherry picked his data and did not do his multivariate analysis correctly. He then went on to bully and threaten anyone who disagreed with him for the rest of his life.
we tend to believe that scientists belong to a different breed of humans who do not hold grudges, aren't greedy, biased etc. The reality is completely different, unfortunately.
It's pretty indisputable that fruit and vegetable consumption reduces CVD, increases mental well-being, and lowers weight.
> Saturated fats causing increased cholesterol, thus leading to heart failure
Previous evidence certainly overestimated the impact of saturated fats, especially vis-a-vis processed carbohydrates. However there's no doubt that saturated fat still increases CVD mortality vis-a-vis unsaturated fats.
One of the biggest pitfalls in thinking about nutrition is asking "is food group X good or bad?" The real question is food group X good or bad in comparison to what? After all if people reduce the percent of X in their diet they have to replace it with something else. Beef is "good for you" if the marginal substitute is cupcakes, but "bad for you" if the marginal substitute is salmon.
This is absolutely correct and I don't know why anyone would try to deny it. We've known most of these things for a long time, as well as having multiple studies reinforce it, including recent ones.
Filling out your meals with more plant based foods instead of avoiding those foods while eating lots of low quality meat will have measurably better outcomes:
I had to take Health class in middle school and high school, and it didn't include any of these claims. Even if it had, my health education (while admittedly not great) consisted of a lot more than just 3 facts.
Well, no one said there is a downside - maybe there is, we simply don't know. Just like we do not know whether drinking two liters of water does have any benefit at all.
Recently, I have read an article which claimed that one should only drink water when their body demands it, you know, like becoming thirsty. The problem is, in most of the popular science circles these kinds of urban myths are propagated almost as if they were basic nutritional facts. I would personally think some mega-companies, such as Nestle, would be really interested in propagating the myth of the necessity of consuming at least two liters of water.
also, you might be interested in researching why cutting back saturated fats might not be as beneficial as it has been claimed for decades now. Actually, there is a new kid in town - ketogenetic diet.
Just saw this comment on a Facebook page dedicated to science:
"Late last year, an analysis of 1.7 million people found you were 25 percent less likely to develop the condition if you had your appendix removed. Now a bigger study says the complete opposite. Believe it or not, this is science working
For anyone considering skipping breakfast but finding themselves too hungry, I would recommend trying it anyway. When I eat breakfast regularly I get hungry at that time of day, but once I’ve skipped it for a week or two then my body seems to get used to it and I no longer get hungry at that time.
Also, black coffee for me helps suppress my appetite.
Hunger is an interesting feeling. The tide sweeps in, hunger emerges like a wave, a call for action on the horizon. It reaches a crescendo, and then collapses, and disappears. At least, that's how my "routine hunger" feels: eat at time A on day 1, and you'll be hungry at time A on day 2.
The thing to remember about hunger as a craving is that it'll always pass if you leave it alone. Have a cup of water and let it go.
(please note: this is only referring to short term hunger sensations. there is a longer term hunger, but it feels different, more subtle but more all-encompassing)
In my personal anecdotal experience, skipping breakfast and instead "fasting" from last night's dinner through to lunch has been really effective at weight control. You are starving by 10am for the first few days you do it, but after that you dont even notice you've skipped eating breakfast. Makes you wonder why you even had breakfast in the first place after a while. I believe that skipping breakfast has now been given a grandiose term of "intermittent fasting" or "intermittent energy restriction diet". I still call it skipping breakfast.
I'll still have breakfast at the weekends as its more of a social thing then, but on the usual 9-5 rat race I just skip it and save 10-20 mins of my day usually spent getting/making + eating breakfast. I even skip before a morning workout - so far no problems after many years doing it.
Consuming breakfast takes tome so I’ve skipped for awhile now. When I get hungry I usually drink a cup of tea black. I eat an early lunch around 11.30am so that does me until dinner at 6pm. I find a cycle of predictiveness allows me to keep a regular weight which trends downwards if I don’t deviate.
I also avoid snack machines at work by never having loose change. I also avoid ‘free food’ unless fruit. Keep sugar to a minimum so no soda and no visits to drive through or donut shops. No soda either.
Skipping breakfast just means increasing the time interval between starting your fast after dinner and breaking your fast during break-fast, call it whatever you want.
I find it funny how many people dislike the term intermittent fasting. To me it’s just as silly as the people who attach their whole being to a diet like those living the “Keto life”. Keto and IF are effective ways of losing weight for lots of people including me, but it all just comes down to calorie in calorie out at the end of the day.
Eat if you're hungry or your doctor tells you too. And when you eat, eat good food.
I don't understand why people overcomplicate it. The only difference is if you're trying to lose or gain weight, in which case it makes sense to watch how much and what you eat, when is less important. Follow your body's cues, and plan ahead so you have good options when you're hungry.
Personally, my body isn't ready for breakfast for an hour or two after I wake up, but my kids like to eat as soon as they get up, so I get up earlier so my mealtime matches my kids. I get up between 5-6, and my kids get up around 7:30, so breakfast at 8 works for both of us. Before I had kids, I'd wake up later, skip breakfast entirely, and have an early lunch (11 or so).
Afaict, the "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" came from breakfast makers (dairy, cereal, etc), not medical research. Breakfast can be important, if you're hungry in the morning.
> Eat if you're hungry or your doctor tells you too. And when you eat, eat good food.
> I don't understand why people overcomplicate it.
Because it is, in fact, more complicated in practice. For one thing, it can take significant effort to isolate and distinguish hunger that signals need to eat for calories, the sensations produced by habitual expectation of food, cravings due to specific needs but not general caloric needs, and even thirst.
> The only difference is if you're trying to lose or gain weight, in which case it makes sense to watch how much and what you eat, when is less important.
When can actually be quite important if you are trying to do anything with law with your day besides losing weight when trying to lose, since managing to maintain a calorie deficit while mitigating the impact of the adverse effects of such a deficit and the associated stress on other activities is nontrivial.
> Follow your body's cues
Your body’s cues are setup to promote overeating when that is possible, because humans aren't actually evolved for constant, reliable food surplus but alternation between surplus and insufficiency.
This is a surprisingly good article. It addresses "confus[ing] correlation with causation", addresses the "sponsored by Kellogg" problem, and hammers on the bad breakfast issue:
"So if you’re going to eat breakfast, seek out foods that give you the vitamins and nutrients you need to stay healthy, like fruits, vegetables, fiber-rich cereals, and eggs. Steer clear of desserts masquerading as breakfast, like high-sugar granola or yogurt."
They only go into the effects on your health regarding weight loss/gain, but I feel like I get a mental boost on mornings when I eat breakfast (either traditional American or Mediterranean style, never sugar cereal or whatever). The days I eat breakfast, I feel more focused. When I skip it, I’m on the express train to A.D.D. Town.
When I was young and without a daily schedule, I'd typically end up eating two meals a day. Something like brunch and something like dinner.
In adult life, with a typical schedule, I just skip breakfast and have lunch and dinner like everybody else. It's not a problem at all. Getting up and pretty much immediately having something to eat is just a habit. Sometimes I might get a little hungry before it's time for lunch. Then I have a fruit and that's it.
I don't think this is bad for my capacity at work at all. Ive done the breakfast routine as well, so I know what it's like. I always notice that I'm not working at full speed when I for example haven't slept well or if I'm about to come down with a cold, so I think I would be able to tell if skipping breakfast was having an impact.
Skipping breakfast is my doctor-approved way of keeping my weight in check. I found myself eating a few hours after dinner, so I still have three meals a day, just not at the traditional times. And like others have said here, hunger is almost never a problem. And drinking water is a great way to satisfy the occasional hunger.
The channel is run by Aaron Caroll : Professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, the Vice Chair for Health Policy and Outcomes Research and the Director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research.
75 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadother kinds of breakfast (full-English etc) are healthy
Growing people may need to eat more frequently.
Personally I like to have breakfast at my first break at 10am, so I’m fasting for longer each day. I’m not that far off 40, and if I’m honest I probably don’t need an evening meal either.
Just the fact that I'm hungry in the morning when I wake up should be an indicator.
Everyone's mileage may vary.
Nowadays I don't eat breakfast, as it helps control my weight, and TBH I don't miss it. When I started doing this, I thought about those "truths" I'd been fed as a kid, and suspected they came out of paid-for pseudoscience. A year or so ago I actually looked into this, and sure enough, all these claims about breakfast are from studies sponsored by Kellogs, other cereal brands, or companies closely associated with them.
Governments base policy on these kind of claims, and over time they become unquestioned "truths" - paid-for, corporate science shilling really is an absolute fucking scourge on society.
I know we have come full circle with regard to protein and fats, but having that much fried food all at once doesn't seem like a the most healthy thing.
It usually comes with baked beans - the sauce has a high sugar content.
I don't eat particularly healthily myself, but saying full-English is healthy just sounds like nonsense.
I’ll do a full english with scrambled eggs, sourdough toast, mushrooms in a little butter, home cooked beans, 2 rashers of rindless bacon with a tiny amount of oil fried or grilled, maybe a slice of black pudding, I may even put avocado on the toast.
https://podcastnotes.org/2019/04/23/sinclair-2/
Quotes:
“If I could tell you to do one thing to live longer, it would be to eat less”
Sirtuin and mTOR pathways respond to how much we’re eating.
If we eat less, these pathways get kicked into action
“I try to eat smaller meals, I try not to overeat, and I try to skip meals”
Eating breakfast is not a good weight loss strategy, scientists confirm
And then goes on to say:
if you’ve been eating breakfast to stave off weight gain
Did I miss something?
Same quote, more context:
> if you’ve been eating breakfast to stave off weight gain, researchers are increasingly learning that breakfast might have the opposite of the desired effect — it can promote more calorie consumption and weight gain.
In other news, circles are round. Film at 11.
But assuming the gp was exercising with weights etc, they might mean that they felt they weren't overweight but were carrying excess fat in certain areas, or considered themselves bloated.
Astonished how many pretend a topic so complicated by biology/genetics and routinely proven wrong can be easily broken down into simplistic good/bad buckets (and of course they definitely got it right this time)
Saturated fats and salt are next in line to fall, despite how hard the entrenched old guard of health authorities want to ignore the new evidence.
Like psychology. And I'm sure there are many other examples.
There is so much of this in nutrition because there is profit motive via the food industry.
The thing about nutritional science is that progress seems like it's just not being made at all. We go from fad to fad.
I live in Europe and the promoted diet has always been the same: More fruits and vegetables, less animal products, less fat, less sugar, less processed food, not too much food in general in order to stay lean.
IMO the next change might be general promotion of vitamin and essential fatty acid supplements (notably linseeds or linseed oil).
Related:
Essential fatty acid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_fatty_acid
New Canada Food Guide: Some Can't Handle It (2019-01-22)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp4zWaLE_ik&feature=youtu.be...
Dietary Guidelines, 8th edition, USA, 2015-2020
https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/chapter...
Dr Garth Davis: Americans have become obsessed with Protein (2015-10-28)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQCt3IhaUtU
Ironically the man behind the campaign against protein was called Dr Kellogs and you can guess which company he founded.
There's a great documentary called In Defence of Food. Check it out.
Western lifestyles are relatively sedentary, yet our brains are consuming more information than ever. Mental processes have nutritional needs and we're stabbing in the dark as to how to approach this problem. People have not figured out the best regimen for this new lifestyle.
Eating an apple a day - unsupported
Saturated fats causing increased cholesterol, thus leading to heart failure - unsupported
It seems that almost everything we've been told since childhood to be healthy has no scientific basis whatsoever.
It can also absolutely be the case that old recommendations were a mix of old wives tales (with no scientific basic whatsoever), bad papers (replicated and taken as gospel without reproducibility and further study) and studies sponsored by the food industry to promote this or that foodstuff...
It's pretty indisputable that fruit and vegetable consumption reduces CVD, increases mental well-being, and lowers weight.
> Saturated fats causing increased cholesterol, thus leading to heart failure
Previous evidence certainly overestimated the impact of saturated fats, especially vis-a-vis processed carbohydrates. However there's no doubt that saturated fat still increases CVD mortality vis-a-vis unsaturated fats.
One of the biggest pitfalls in thinking about nutrition is asking "is food group X good or bad?" The real question is food group X good or bad in comparison to what? After all if people reduce the percent of X in their diet they have to replace it with something else. Beef is "good for you" if the marginal substitute is cupcakes, but "bad for you" if the marginal substitute is salmon.
[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g4490.full.pdf+html [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/0802795 [3] https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2016... [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5475232/
Filling out your meals with more plant based foods instead of avoiding those foods while eating lots of low quality meat will have measurably better outcomes:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/255644.php
I'd dispute part of that -- fruit contains significant amounts of sugars, and eating a lot of fruit will result in weight gain.
Eating a lot of vegetables is almost definitely a healthy option, and weight gain is unlikely.
I figure you may as well.
Recently, I have read an article which claimed that one should only drink water when their body demands it, you know, like becoming thirsty. The problem is, in most of the popular science circles these kinds of urban myths are propagated almost as if they were basic nutritional facts. I would personally think some mega-companies, such as Nestle, would be really interested in propagating the myth of the necessity of consuming at least two liters of water.
Also, black coffee for me helps suppress my appetite.
The thing to remember about hunger as a craving is that it'll always pass if you leave it alone. Have a cup of water and let it go.
(please note: this is only referring to short term hunger sensations. there is a longer term hunger, but it feels different, more subtle but more all-encompassing)
Another option is to use a clock instead of gut feeling. I ignore the hunger until the clock tells me it's been 5 hours since my last meal.
I'll still have breakfast at the weekends as its more of a social thing then, but on the usual 9-5 rat race I just skip it and save 10-20 mins of my day usually spent getting/making + eating breakfast. I even skip before a morning workout - so far no problems after many years doing it.
I also avoid snack machines at work by never having loose change. I also avoid ‘free food’ unless fruit. Keep sugar to a minimum so no soda and no visits to drive through or donut shops. No soda either.
I find it funny how many people dislike the term intermittent fasting. To me it’s just as silly as the people who attach their whole being to a diet like those living the “Keto life”. Keto and IF are effective ways of losing weight for lots of people including me, but it all just comes down to calorie in calorie out at the end of the day.
I don't understand why people overcomplicate it. The only difference is if you're trying to lose or gain weight, in which case it makes sense to watch how much and what you eat, when is less important. Follow your body's cues, and plan ahead so you have good options when you're hungry.
Personally, my body isn't ready for breakfast for an hour or two after I wake up, but my kids like to eat as soon as they get up, so I get up earlier so my mealtime matches my kids. I get up between 5-6, and my kids get up around 7:30, so breakfast at 8 works for both of us. Before I had kids, I'd wake up later, skip breakfast entirely, and have an early lunch (11 or so).
Afaict, the "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" came from breakfast makers (dairy, cereal, etc), not medical research. Breakfast can be important, if you're hungry in the morning.
> I don't understand why people overcomplicate it.
Because it is, in fact, more complicated in practice. For one thing, it can take significant effort to isolate and distinguish hunger that signals need to eat for calories, the sensations produced by habitual expectation of food, cravings due to specific needs but not general caloric needs, and even thirst.
> The only difference is if you're trying to lose or gain weight, in which case it makes sense to watch how much and what you eat, when is less important.
When can actually be quite important if you are trying to do anything with law with your day besides losing weight when trying to lose, since managing to maintain a calorie deficit while mitigating the impact of the adverse effects of such a deficit and the associated stress on other activities is nontrivial.
> Follow your body's cues
Your body’s cues are setup to promote overeating when that is possible, because humans aren't actually evolved for constant, reliable food surplus but alternation between surplus and insufficiency.
"So if you’re going to eat breakfast, seek out foods that give you the vitamins and nutrients you need to stay healthy, like fruits, vegetables, fiber-rich cereals, and eggs. Steer clear of desserts masquerading as breakfast, like high-sugar granola or yogurt."
In adult life, with a typical schedule, I just skip breakfast and have lunch and dinner like everybody else. It's not a problem at all. Getting up and pretty much immediately having something to eat is just a habit. Sometimes I might get a little hungry before it's time for lunch. Then I have a fruit and that's it.
I don't think this is bad for my capacity at work at all. Ive done the breakfast routine as well, so I know what it's like. I always notice that I'm not working at full speed when I for example haven't slept well or if I'm about to come down with a cold, so I think I would be able to tell if skipping breakfast was having an impact.
With the exception of the joghurt there is not a single food in this table that I or most of my friends in Germany would eat for 'breakfast'.
The channel is run by Aaron Caroll : Professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, the Vice Chair for Health Policy and Outcomes Research and the Director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research.