Is eating breakfast really so important? Would it matter if you never ate breakfast?
For years, we’ve been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But one former Cambridge University lecturer hopes to challenge this way of thinking. Terence Kealey, 64, believes breakfast is a “dangerous meal” and hopes that in 10 years time it will become as socially unacceptable as smoking cigarettes. He says that skipping breakfast has helped to “effectively cure” him of Type 2 diabetes.
Kealey told Sunday Times food magazine ‘The Dish’ that he hasn’t eaten breakfast since 2008, which is the year he was diagnosed with diabetes. Back then he was told by doctors that his disease was incurable and progressive, however this was something he wasn’t willing to accept. He bought a glucometer to test his blood-sugar levels and noticed a pattern - after he ate breakfast, his levels would rocket.
“At first I always ate breakfast, basing my meals on starchy foods,” he said. “My glucose levels spiked alarmingly, especially after eating breakfast. I was almost guaranteeing that I would kill myself from a heart attack or a stroke, as 80% of diabetics do.”
Kealey decided to skip breakfast and see how that affected his glucose levels. His experiment worked, as his blood-sugar dropped to within the normal range. “Even after lunch and dinner, they didn’t rise anywhere near as high,” he added. He said that since he began his ritual of avoiding breakfast and fasting until lunchtime, he has “effectively cured” his diabetes.*
And he is not the only academic to question the concept of breakfast.
The health claims for breakfast are innumerable.
“The problem is that these benefits, although logical sounding, are largely assumptions based on observational studies and had never actually been tested,” says James Betts, who studies nutrition and metabolism at the University of Bath, UK. “I was amazed when I started looking for evidence – I thought there would be a lot,” he says. What was out there, though, didn’t stand up to scrutiny. So he decided to find out for himself.
Betts says a combination of a food industry pushing breakfast goods and the media misreporting science have combined to create a mythology around the morning meal. If easing your hunger when you wake up is important to you, then eat breakfast. If you are not hungry – and especially if you are overweight – then don’t eat out of some misguided notion that breakfast is essential.**
What do you think? Do you eat breakfast? I haven't eaten breakfast for decades and know that if I do it makes me feel more sluggish.
*http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...b0961f09385232?utm_hp_ref=uk-diet-and-fitness
** https://www.newscientist.com/article/2081573-is-breakfast-really-the-most-important-meal-of-the-day/
For years, we’ve been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But one former Cambridge University lecturer hopes to challenge this way of thinking. Terence Kealey, 64, believes breakfast is a “dangerous meal” and hopes that in 10 years time it will become as socially unacceptable as smoking cigarettes. He says that skipping breakfast has helped to “effectively cure” him of Type 2 diabetes.
Kealey told Sunday Times food magazine ‘The Dish’ that he hasn’t eaten breakfast since 2008, which is the year he was diagnosed with diabetes. Back then he was told by doctors that his disease was incurable and progressive, however this was something he wasn’t willing to accept. He bought a glucometer to test his blood-sugar levels and noticed a pattern - after he ate breakfast, his levels would rocket.
“At first I always ate breakfast, basing my meals on starchy foods,” he said. “My glucose levels spiked alarmingly, especially after eating breakfast. I was almost guaranteeing that I would kill myself from a heart attack or a stroke, as 80% of diabetics do.”
Kealey decided to skip breakfast and see how that affected his glucose levels. His experiment worked, as his blood-sugar dropped to within the normal range. “Even after lunch and dinner, they didn’t rise anywhere near as high,” he added. He said that since he began his ritual of avoiding breakfast and fasting until lunchtime, he has “effectively cured” his diabetes.*
And he is not the only academic to question the concept of breakfast.
The health claims for breakfast are innumerable.
“The problem is that these benefits, although logical sounding, are largely assumptions based on observational studies and had never actually been tested,” says James Betts, who studies nutrition and metabolism at the University of Bath, UK. “I was amazed when I started looking for evidence – I thought there would be a lot,” he says. What was out there, though, didn’t stand up to scrutiny. So he decided to find out for himself.
Betts says a combination of a food industry pushing breakfast goods and the media misreporting science have combined to create a mythology around the morning meal. If easing your hunger when you wake up is important to you, then eat breakfast. If you are not hungry – and especially if you are overweight – then don’t eat out of some misguided notion that breakfast is essential.**
What do you think? Do you eat breakfast? I haven't eaten breakfast for decades and know that if I do it makes me feel more sluggish.
*http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...b0961f09385232?utm_hp_ref=uk-diet-and-fitness
** https://www.newscientist.com/article/2081573-is-breakfast-really-the-most-important-meal-of-the-day/
OK! I think you will find that the full English (bacon, eggs, sausages) is one of the most traditional and popular breakfasts in the UK! And if I ever have breakfast in a hotel, that is what I have.
