I generally don't eat breakfast. (I know, I know.)
The wife has a bowl of generic brand cereal every morning.
I don't eat breakfast either.
Every once in a while I might make egg muffins to eat in the car. Its eggsactly what it sounds like, a mini omlette cooked in a muffin tin.
For shame! If you care about your health, breakfast is a must!
Not really. At least not for me. I track it all pretty closely (blood sugars and such).
Science disagrees with you! Here are some sources:
-A Harvard University/Massachusetts General Hospital study of children in Philadelphia and Baltimore schools discovered that students who usually ate school breakfast had improved math grades, reduced hyperactivity, decreased absence and tardy rates, and improved psycho-social behaviors compared with children who rarely ate school breakfast. (Pediatrics, January, 1998; Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, February, 1998)
-Here is a cool study done by a student in Texas: http://amcbt.indstate.edu/volume_30/v30-4p15-19.pdf
-"Eating breakfast of any kind prevent(s) many of the adverse effects of fasting," such as irritability and fatigue, according to Bonnie Spring, Ph.D. , University of Health Sciences/Chicago Medical School.
Yes, most studies about breakfast are performed for students. However, the results would certainly carry over to adult performance as well. Eating breakfast is such a simple way to improve your life. The only reason I could think of for not eating it is morning laziness - very un-Mustachian.
Sorry Jarvis, anytime you treat "Science" like a person with one unified opinion, you are committing a grave scientific sin.
Some studies suggest that people who eat breakfast early in the day also tend to report more energy. What it DOESN'T say is that breakfast CAUSES more energy. That's taking a correlation and treating it like a cause, another grave scientific sin. Many things can explain a relationship between factor A and factor B, so the appearance of a relationship doesn't = causation.
Case in point: The first study you quote doesn't control for covariates like WHAT the kids ate (or didn't), what their diet is the rest of the day, as well as the socioeconomic status of their families. A kid from a poor family might not get breakfast before school. That kid might also have behavioral issues, but it's likely that those behavioral issues are NOT caused by the lack of breakfast, but by some other factor linked to poverty. They can attempt to statistically control for some covariates, but often that's not enough to conclusively say breakfast causes a difference in behavior. Variables may be related, but the causal relationship can't be determined by that study alone unless you have a randomized sample, which they don't. It's one of the inherent flaws in large epidemiological studies.
For every study saying that breakfast is necessary and good for you (not counting the ones that are funded by Kellogg or other breakfast food companies as those are all bullshit), there's probably another study saying it doesn't make a difference one way or the other. Some studies have even suggested that sustained fasting can be good for you.
A few citations:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17909674http://www.e-spenjournal.org/article/S1751-4991%2810%2900054-5/abstracthttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9040548And while I hate to link to a slightly hokey muscle blog, this actually has some pretty solid but still readable info:
http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debunked.htmlAlso, not to be nitpicky, but it's false to say that athletes are the healthiest people around. They're certainly very fit, but often elite athlete status means taking your body to a level of activity that is actually fairly unhealthy for it. Check out the link between marathon running and heart problems (not to even mention joint problems). Activity is good, but it has diminishing returns over time. And unless you're hanging out with athletes all day, you also can't really say they all eat breakfast. There's actually a fairly robust movement within the fitness world of people training fasted, because they believe it leads to better performance. Most athletes are focused on better performance, rather than better health. Health may be a byproduct of performance gains, but not always.
Conclusion: I don't have a problem with breakfast, and I generally eat it myself as my dinners tend to be fairly small. But some people, particularly those who eat later in the day, just aren't hungry in the morning. There is NO conclusive evidence that breakfast has a
causal link to physiological, behavioral, or cognitive benefits, and thus no reason to believe that early breakfast is necessary for everyone. All in all, breakfast is a personal choice- awesome for some folks, not so awesome for others. I know you mean well, but how about just letting people make their own meal timing choices?