Why Breakfast Is the Most Important Meal of the Day
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Why Breakfast Is the Most Important Meal of the Day
Kids Need Their Morning Meal
While adults need to eat breakfast each day to perform their best,
kids need it even more. Their growing bodies and developing brains
rely heavily on the regular intake of food. When kids skip breakfast,
they can end up going for as long as eighteen hours without food, and
this period of semistarvation can create a lot of physical,
intellectual, and behavioral problems for them.
A Good Investment
If you and your kids regularly skip breakfast in the interest of
saving time or getting a few more minutes of sleep, remember that
eating a wholesome, nutritious morning meal will probably save you
time in the long run. By recharging your brain and your body, you'll
be more efficient in just about everything you do. Interestingly,
studies show that kids who skip breakfast are tardy and absent from
school more often than children who eat breakfast on a regular basis.
Preparing a good breakfast can be as quick and easy as splashing some
milk over cereal. Time invested in breakfast is much more valuable
than the few extra minutes of sleep you might get by bypassing the
morning meal. If you and your kids seem unable to make time for
breakfast, consider enrolling your children in a school breakfast
program, if possible, or pack a breakfast brown-bag the night before
so that you and your kids can eat on the way to school and work.
Break the Fast to Shed the Pounds
Some people skip breakfast in an effort to lose weight, but the
practice is more likely to cause weight gain than weight loss.
Skipping breakfast is strongly linked to the development of obesity.
Studies show that overweight and obese children, adolescents, and
adults are less likely to break the fast each morning than their
thinner counterparts.
According to research, skipping meals, especially breakfast, can
actually make weight control more difficult. Breakfast skippers tend
to eat more food than usual at the next meal or nibble on high-calorie
snacks to stave off hunger. Several studies suggest that people tend
to accumulate more body fat when they eat fewer, larger meals than
when they eat the same number of calories in smaller, more frequent
meals. To teens, especially teenage girls, skipping breakfast may seem
like a perfectly logical way to cut down on calories and lose weight.
It's important for moms to educate their kids about the importance of
the morning meal and the role it plays in maintaining good health and
preventing obesity.
WebMD Medical Reference
SOURCES:
Wahlstrom, Kyla L. & Begalle, M. (1999). More Than Test Scores –
Results of the Universal School Breakfast Pilot in Minnesota. Topics
in Clinical Nutrition, vol 15: no 1.
Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 2003; vol 22: pp
296-302.
The Journal of Nutrition, 2004; vol 134: pp 104-111.
Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 2005; vol 105: pp
1373-82.
Obesity Research, 2002; vol 10: pp 78-82.
Reviewed by John A. Seibel, MD on February 25, 2010
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