Breakfast Is Not the Most Important Meal of the Day

Melanie Ramos 9 min. of reading Well-being habits Leave a comment

Surely you’ve heard the classic saying “eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dine like a pauper” a million times, or that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but what you don’t know is that based on what we can see, breakfast is actually the worst meal of the day, and in this article I’ll try to clear up why.

What Is Breakfast

As the name suggests, breakfast is nothing more than the first meal after a fast, and if we check Wikipedia (although it’s not a great source to rely on) it says about breakfast that

It is the first meal consumed in the day, and it’s usually eaten in the morning. The name comes from the fact that you don’t eat while you sleep, so when you wake up in the morning you’re fasting, breaking that fast by having this meal (break-fast)

First Meal After the Fast

Actually, breakfast is the first meal after the overnight fast. In fact, in other languages it translates as the first meal of the morning, which is basically what everyone does. That is, if you skip that morning meal right after waking up and do a 16h fast (intermittent fasting), breakfast would be the meal or even the snack, since it’s the first meal you have. But here we’ll talk about what’s known as breakfast, which is just the first meal in the morning after waking up.

If you skip that morning meal right after waking up and do a 16h fast (intermittent fasting), breakfast would be the meal or even the snack, since it’s the first meal you have

Click below if you want to dive deeper into Intermittent Fasting

Is Breakfast the Most Important Meal?

Flawed Logic

It’s been called the most important meal of the day only recently, because a somewhat flawed logic was applied thinking you should have a big meal first thing to fill energy stores, which you’d burn throughout the day, gradually decreasing meal sizes until a light, especially low-carb dinner, to avoid storing fat overnight.

This logic isn’t entirely correct.

Avoid Eating in the Morning

Eating breakfast without prior activity isn’t something humans have done for that long. If you look at recent hunter-gatherer societies, they don’t eat abundantly during the day. Even medieval European writings mention that eating early in the day led to gluttony and should be avoided. In fact, until the 15th century, breakfast was frowned upon because it implied you were too weak to wait until the first meal of the day.

Eating as a Reward

In ancient times, food was the reward after the effort to find more food. That is, first they had to work hard to gather or hunt the food they’d eat after physical activity, and the hungrier they were, the more diligently they’d work. If lucky, they’d celebrate with a good feast at the end of the day.

Breakfast’s Importance Is Overhyped

In the previous point I already mentioned Wikipedia isn’t a place where what’s written is based on scientific studies but rather most nutrition articles fall into old myths. Just look at how the breakfast entry continues:

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, since having it or not affects us significantly in the short and long term. Some consequences of skipping breakfast (or just drinking a bit of coffee) are general fatigue, bad mood, lack of concentration, low physical and intellectual performance, all mainly due to lack of glucose, which in turn disrupts our body. Breakfast raises blood glucose levels, helping the body function more effectively. Daily performance improves with a proper breakfast as it helps with memory, concentration, and learning.”

Lack of Scientific Rigor

This has no scientific basis to back it up. In fact, if you’ve tried intermittent fasting or some form of fasting for a while (once adapted), and trained fasted, you’ll see you don’t lack performance, concentration, or get grumpy. Bad mood is usually a personality trait, not caused by skipping morning food.

It’s No Big Deal to Skip Breakfast

Even if you’ve been breakfasting all your life, you’re probably so used to it that you think something bad will happen if you don’t eat breakfast, like feeling dizzy, having energy crashes, or not performing well. But it’s just a habit you’ve given your body. I experienced this in the first weeks of training or working fasted, but once adapted I can do it or not without any problem.

How to Improve Your Circadian Rhythm? Click here to find out

Breakfast Today

Lack of Nutrients

Usually, the most common breakfast today is completely unhealthy, where what we eat is very high in carbs and very low in fats and protein. Since the early 20th century, we’ve been used to eating all kinds of sugary products like cereals, cookies, pastries, churros, juices, or bread without limits, where protein and fat are usually limited to a glass of milk (often skimmed) with added sugar (like nesquik or colacao).

Carbs as the Main Dish

Overdoing carbs in a meal facilitates tryptophan entering the brain, which is a precursor to serotonin that participates in producing melatonin (the sleep hormone). So it’s not very smart to get out of bed and prepare your body to feel sleepy again. It might make sense if you’re going to bed soon, but that’s not the case for breakfast.

With all this, we can see that the classic phrase “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” isn’t true, and it’s not even true that breakfast helps prevent weight gain¹. In fact, it should just be another meal of the day, and seeing what most people eat for breakfast nowadays, it’s clear why this post is titled: “Breakfast is not the best meal of the day”.

If You Eat Breakfast, Do It Right

You’ve made it this far and now you’re wondering if you should eat breakfast or not. That depends mainly on your needs or preferences, but what’s clear is that you shouldn’t eat breakfast like people do nowadays. You shouldn’t eat pastries, cereals, cookies, churros, or other sugary products.

Try Intermittent Fasting

Skipping breakfast is as valid an option as eating it properly (IF or Intermittent Fasting 16/8 is a very healthy option²), and much better than eating processed sugary products. But many people need to have something in their stomach to start the day because they enjoy that meal. If that’s you, keep doing it but choose better products.

Protein for Breakfast

For a more optimal breakfast, you should include a good source of protein since it’s proven³ to reduce hunger much more during the morning than a carb-based breakfast. Also include a good amount of fats, as this lowers the overall meal’s glycemic index and improves cognitive performance compared to a high-GI meal⁴.

What’s the Best Protein for Breakfast? Click on this link to find out

Avoid Juices

Carbs should come from natural foods (real food) like vegetables or whole fruit, since juices lose the fiber that fills you up and improves intestinal transit.

Eggs, the Best Breakfast Option

Doesn’t Raise Blood Cholesterol

Without a doubt, eggs are the best option for a nutritious and healthy breakfast, and there’s no need to fear cholesterol, since it’s known that dietary cholesterol doesn’t impact blood cholesterol⁵. Eggs can be combined in many ways with other foods like avocado, nuts, aged cheese, bacon, fish, etc.

Nutritional Value

Eggs are a powerful food, the best natural protein source by biological value and net protein utilization (only surpassed by protein supplements). They’re rich in vitamins (A, D, K, B2, B5, B12) and minerals (iron, phosphorus, potassium, selenium), provide choline, a key nutrient for the brain (and studies show only 10% of people reach the recommended amount), the yolk is a source of carotenoids, important nutrients for eye health, a source of Omega 3, and filling.

False Myths

Eggs are one of the most nutritious foods out there, if not the most, but have been demonized for years due to pharmaceutical industry misinformation about blood cholesterol levels. Sadly, many doctors still limit weekly egg intake, which has been proven totally wrong⁶.