Breakfast: Does it help you lose weight?
updated the 14 July 2015 à 18:34According to the latest studies on the subject, having breakfast will not particularly help you lose weight, or be healthier. So, should you have breakfast or not?
For years, we have repeatedly heard that breakfast is THE most important meal of the day and that you should never skip it – especially if you wish to be slim! Today, new researches contradict this nutrition dogma, and question the supposed influence of breakfast on our weight.
Both studies were simultaneously published in the The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition publication. In the first one, researchers of the University of Alabama recruited 300 volunteers who were trying to lose weight. Some of them had a compulsory breakfast, whereas another group had to skip it and the other participants could continue to eat or not in the morning, according to their habits.
EATING BREAKFAST DOES NOT HELP US GET SLIMMER
After 16 weeks of experiments, the scientists came to a conclusion. Indeed, there was no significant impact on the weight of the participants of the three groups. Another study, this time on slim people, observed more closely the level of cholesterol as well as the amount of sugar in the blood of 33 volunteers who were asked to force themselves to have breakfast or, on the contrary, to skip the first meal of the day. The result: all the indicators were identical except one.
Those who have breakfast move more during the morning and use approximately 500 Kcal. It is more or less the same number of calories they ingested by consuming a slice of bread, butter, coffee and so on… And those who had eaten nothing in the morning, did not eat more at lunch or at dinner. In brief, the role of this meal is not as crucial as we thought until now.
“Even if the duration of these studies is a little bit short and the number of volunteers insufficient, we can nevertheless say that if you like having breakfast it is good, but if it is not the case, it is useless to force you,” explains Dr Betts who collaborated no these researches.
Source: New York Times
Maureen Diament
