Fri, Mar-25-16, 01:48
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Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: UK
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Give breakfast a miss if you want to lose weight
Quote:
From The Times
London, UK
25 March, 2016
Give breakfast a miss if you want to lose weight
People wanting to shed a few pounds should ignore the oldest dieting rule and skip breakfast as there is no proof that scoffing eggs, toast, porridge and fruit first thing will prevent overeating later in the day.
Doctors have long encouraged people to consume roughly a third of their daily calories in the morning to keep their weight down but experts claim that there is little clinical evidence to justify breakfast’s reputation as the most important meal of the day.
James Betts, a senior lecturer in nutrition at the University of Bath, has dismissed the claim that “eating breakfast like a king” will kick-start the metabolism to burn more energy and prevent unhealthy food choices later on.
“The problem is that these benefits, although logical sounding, are largely assumptions based on observational studies and had never actually been tested,” he told New Scientist magazine. “I was amazed when I started looking for evidence; I thought there would be a lot.”
The concept of a healthy breakfast was introduced around the turn of the last century by John Harvey Kellogg to sell more of his cereal but since then hundreds of papers have been written claiming that skipping breakfast encourages unhealthy eating later in the day.
However, these studies are largely observational, Dr Betts explained, meaning that it is hard to determine whether people who are healthy tend to have breakfast or if they are healthy because they have breakfast.
To test the theories Dr Betts asked one group of subjects to eat a breakfast of 700 calories or more while the others had to drink only water until lunch.
The no-breakfast group ate more at lunch, but not enough to make up the 700 calories consumed by the breakfast-eaters. Similarly, skipping breakfast did not increase hunger later in the day.
Hormone tests showed that the levels of hunger were similar in both groups until lunchtime whereas by mid-afternoon the people who had eaten breakfast were hungrier.
By the end of the day the extra calories consumed by the breakfast-eaters tended to have been burnt off because this group had higher levels of physical activity, largely through fidgeting and light exercise.
Dr Betts added: “As soon as a doctor finds out that an overweight patient skips breakfast they’ll often tell them to make sure they eat it every day.
“But should we not know more about the health effects? We try not to give other health advice without evidence, so why are we more lax with breakfast?”
Previous research has shown that children who skip breakfast tend to perform worse at school than children who eat it but other factors such as lack of sleep, higher levels of poverty or neglect may also contribute.
Peter Rogers, a psychology professor specialising in nutrition and behaviour at the University of Bristol, added: “Most of us could do with eating less. Given that it’s probably the easiest meal to skip, maybe skipping breakfast occasionally could be that opportunity.”
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http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/healt...icle4721179.ece
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