People Who Skip Breakfast Miss Vital Nutrients

 

Skipping breakfast can be an convenient addiction to start, whether out of comfort or in an effort to reduce calories.

However, a new study from researchers at The Ohio State University indicates that regularly skipping breakfast may be a terrible idea.

In fact, you could be lacking out on numerous essential nutrients that you won’t make up for later in the day.

Breakfast skippers are more likely to fall short on certain nutrients

The crew took data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), an ongoing annual survey that seeks to capture a photograph of the health and nutritional status of Americans.

The pattern used for this study covered 30,889 adults ages 19 and older who had participated in the NHANES between 2005 and 2016.

To determine who had skipped breakfast, they looked at the 24-hour dietary recalls that the survey participants had completed.

They then calculated the nutrient content of what the breakfast skippers said they’d consumed.

They discovered that people who skipped breakfast tended to have a very exclusive nutritional profile than those who did eat a morning meal.

When it came to several key nutrients that the crew looked at — like fiber, magnesium, copper, and zinc — breakfast skippers also took in much less than breakfast eaters.

In addition, the largest variations in consumption were discovered in folate, calcium, iron, and vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, C, and D.

Also, breakfast skippers tended to have an general poorer quality diet due to more snacking, specially on sugars, carbohydrates, and fat.

What’s so vital about breakfast?

At first glance, it might appear that people could really make up for breakfast by consuming different meals later in the day. But research indicates that usually isn’t the case.

The senior author of the study, Christopher Taylor, PhD, RDN, LD, FAND, associate professor of medical dietetics in the College of Medicine at The Ohio State University, described breakfast as a “unique meal opportunity.”

According to Taylor, meals that are usually eaten in a ordinary American breakfast — like cereal, milk, fruit, and grains — are much less likely to be eaten at other times of the day.

These foods naturally contain nutrients like calcium, iron, phosphorus, and fiber.

In addition, many of these meals are fortified with essential nutrients, he said. Refined grains and cereals have added iron, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and folate. Dairy has added vitamins A and D.

Fortification of certain meals is important, Taylor explained, due to the fact it adds back nutrients that are lost in the refining process.

Because these foods have a tendency to be unique to a breakfast meal, Taylor stated that the nutrients they contain are much less likely to be eaten in other meals.