Early Saturday morning, Mom fries 12 thick pieces of bacon, bathing the kitchen with light grey smoke and that tantalizing pig-belly aroma. Across the marble-countered island, Dad hovers near the griddle peeking over at the television as the pancakes blacken. There aren’t any eggs today, but this doesn’t ruin the meal.
The improvised grits sizzle in the pot, begging to be taken off the heat. My brother tosses the pancake toppings, a dozen cut-up strawberries and a container of plump blueberries, into a bowl.
WebMD, an online medical dictionary, says a heart-healthy breakfast full of vitamins and proteins like this one my family makes, is the most important meal of the day, but it isn’t. Breakfast isn’t and never was the most important meal of the day.
When Europeans first moved to America and brought along their thrice a day eating, breakfast was just a small meatless meal that used to tide people over until the midday feast.
It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution where workers went off to the factories for nine hours without much of a lunch break, when breakfast became a bigger occasion. People started consuming large calorie-saturated breakfasts every day, which caused waistlines to grow. This breakfast phenomenon led to the creation of corn flakes, the first cereal.
It grew more popular as it was advertised as more nutritious than the traditional eggs and bacon meal. The main selling point the creators used was a catchy slogan still said today, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
A slogan isn’t a trustworthy source of information and doesn’t provide the factual evidence an experiment or study done by professionals does, which proves dinner and lunch can be just as important as breakfast.
Breakfast isn’t crucial to eat. Skipping it doesn’t prevent energy levels from falling or slowing down metabolism. It makes no difference whatsoever.
The National Center for Biotechnology Information, with the help of 52 volunteers, conducted an experiment on whether breakfast was important or nonessential.
Half of the volunteers ate breakfast while the other half did not. Both groups consumed the same amount of calories each day.
After 12 weeks, the center concluded breakfast had zero effect on weight loss, metabolism and insulin levels. This proves breakfast is not necessary in order to be healthy.
In addition, in 2014 the University of Bath did its own study as to whether breakfast is essential to the daily diet. The university concluded that it did not matter if a person ate breakfast or not. It had zero effect on the overall calories they consumed in a day.
Therefore, even when one group ate breakfast and another did not, neither group ended up consuming more than the other.
So, in the end, we should eat breakfast whenever hunger strikes, not because it’s “the most important meal of the day.”
Also, breakfast should not be skipped because of the “breakfast will make you fat” rumors. Neither idea is true. Breakfast should be eaten based on hunger, not a schedule or belief that it must or must not happen. It’s flexible like that. The idea that our meals should be dictated by times regardless of hunger is impractical and unhealthy.
Mom finishes the bacon just as Dad guiltily plates the pancakes. My brother and I sit down and dig in, not because we feel obligated to or because we’re afraid of not having enough energy for our soccer game later, but because we’re hungry. That’s when we eat.