A new study has suggested that adults who skip breakfast fail to get key nutrients that are found in the foods eaten in the morning meals, according to Science Daily.
The study, published online in Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, analyzed data on more than 30,000 American adults and found that those who skipped breakfast missed out on essential nutrients such as calcium, vitamin C, fiber, among others, leaving them low on these nutrients for the whole day.
Senior author Dr. Christopher Taylor of The Ohio State University said, “What we’re seeing is that if you don’t eat the foods that are commonly consumed at breakfast, you have a tendency not to eat them the rest of the day. So those common breakfast nutrients become a nutritional gap.”
Calcium, vitamin D, potassium, and fiber are considered “dietary components of public health concern” for the American population, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest dietary guidelines. The shortages of these nutrients are associated with a variety of health issues.
In children, skipping morning meals could lead to difficulty focusing and behavioral problems.
Dr. Taylor explained, “With adults, it’s more like, ‘You know how important breakfast is.’ But now we see what the implications really are if they miss breakfast.”
The researchers analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), evaluating more than 30,000 adults aged 19 and above, from 2005 to 2016.
The study’s first author Stephanie Fanelli said, “During the recall, participants self-designate their eating occasions as a meal or a snack, and they tell you at what point in time they ate whatever food they report. That’s how we determined whether someone was a breakfast eater or a breakfast skipper.”
Breakfast skippers also lacked folate, iron, and vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, and D.
Fanelli explained, “We found those who skipped breakfast were significantly more likely not to meet the bottom threshold of what we hope to see people eat.”
In addition, breakfast skippers were more likely to eat more added sugars, carbs, and total fat over the course of the day, increasing their levels of snacking.
Dr. Taylor explained, “Snacking is basically contributing a meal’s worth of calorie intakes for people who skipped breakfast. People who ate breakfast ate more total calories than people who didn’t eat breakfast, but the lunch, dinner, and snacks were much larger for people who skipped breakfast, and tended to be of a lower diet quality.”
