7 ms·

This reads like "I don't eat breakfast, so here's the reasons why I'm right." Studies that support his conclusion, while flawed, are probably right. Studies tha

This reads like "I don't eat breakfast, so here's the reasons why I'm right." Studies that support his conclusion, while flawed, are probably right. Studies that oppose it are obviously tainted by various problems. The fact that research shows that breakfast is actually beneficial for children is hand-waved away because 'reasons'. This is honestly just a low-quality, cherry-picked opinion piece by someone who really doesn't like breakfast.

IIlllIllIIIIlII 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mikeash 10y ago
  "X is good for you" is not typically a universal statement, but a probabilistic one. It doesn't have to be good for every single person in every single circumstance in order to be correct. It merely needs to be better for most people. For example, not being overweight is good for you. The existence of people who survive famine because they started out obese doesn't disprove that.
  - IIlllIllIIIIlII 10y ago
    "Breakfast is good for you" implies that it has some benefit. In some cases, however, the cost of eating breakfast is greater than its benefit. For instance, if you have to get to work at 5am, are you better off waking up earlier to eat breakfast? In this case, the cost of lost sleep may be greater than the benefit of breakfast. The NYT article points out that many of the studies that claim breakfast is good may be flawed. If that's true, then we are likely overestimating the benefit of breakfast. And that means that in many cases where we thought perceived_benefit(breakfast) > cost(breakfast) it could actually be that real_benefit(breakfast) < cost(breakfast)
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Yes, of course. I don't disagree with that at all. I'm just saying that "breakfast is good for you" is not disproven merely by showing that it's not always good for you.
      - IIlllIllIIIIlII 10y ago
        my original thoughts were wrong. it makes more sense to use a cost/benefit function (ala economics) rather than a logical argument
        mikeash 10y ago
        Gotcha. I think that's what I'm trying to say as well.
        ethbro 10y ago
        Feel free to leave original comments up. No shame in knowledge or thoughts!
- de_Selby 10y ago
  I contend that lunch and dinner are also good for you. Can you apply the same logic there?
  - arcticbull 10y ago
    Well, yes, that's why you have people investigating intermittent fasting. Some interesting results there too. It's good to question things.
jonknee 10y ago
Well there is no shortage of people who like breakfast (or are in charge of selling people breakfast) and hand wave about it being "the most important meal of the day". The truth is probably people have different metabolisms and if you are hungry in the morning you should eat and if you are not you shouldn't. And that's almost exactly what this post suggests: > The bottom line is that the evidence for the importance of breakfast is something of a mess. If you’re hungry, eat it. But don’t feel bad if you’d rather skip it, and don’t listen to those who lecture you. Breakfast has no mystical powers.
- thomasahle 10y ago
  And again other people may have metabolisms that need to be "kick started" in the morning by breakfast, to keep a stable bloodsugar level during the day.
  - jonknee 10y ago
    No shit: > people have different metabolisms and if you are hungry in the morning you should eat and if you are not you shouldn't
    - lmm 10y ago
      People with the metabolism the grandparent describes don't feel hungry in the morning, but nevertheless should eat in the morning.
  - fu9ar 10y ago
    Did you read the article or just head straight into posting this morning?
- bgilroy26 10y ago
  >The truth is probably people have different metabolisms and if you are hungry in the morning you should eat and if you are not you shouldn't. Bodies don't always cooperate, if you are going to exercise strenuously in a given day you had better eat some kind of breakfast whether your body feels like it or not. Breakfast is always going to be the opportunity to eat when you have more of the day ahead of you. That's true by definition, and it's the principle behind the chestnut about it being the most important meal of the day. There isn't much more to it than that.
coldtea 10y ago
>This reads like "I don't eat breakfast, so here's the reasons why I'm right." Actually he gives very reasoned arguments and comments on meta-studies showing that he is right -- not that breakfast is bad, but in that it doesn't make any difference, and if it does nobody has clearly shown it. (a) . In a paper published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2013, researchers reviewed the literature on the effect of breakfast on obesity to look specifically at this issue. They first noted that nutrition researchers love to publish results showing a correlation between skipping breakfast and obesity. (b) However, they also found major flaws in the reporting of findings. People were consistently biased in interpreting their results in favor of a relationship between skipping breakfast and obesity. They improperly used causal language to describe their results. They misleadingly cited others’ results. And they also improperly used causal language in citing others’ results. (c) Few randomized controlled trials exist. Those that do, although methodologically weak like most nutrition studies, don’t support the necessity of breakfast. (d) Further confusing the field is a 2014 study (with more financial conflicts of interest than I thought possible) that found that getting breakfast skippers to eat breakfast, and getting breakfast eaters to skip breakfast, made no difference with respect to weight loss. But a 1992 trial that did the same thing found that both groups lost weight. A balanced perspective would acknowledge that we have no idea what’s going on. (e) Many of the studies are funded by the food industry, which has a clear bias. Kellogg funded a highly cited article that found that cereal for breakfast is associated with being thinner. The Quaker Oats Center of Excellence (part of PepsiCo) financed a trial that showed that eating oatmeal or frosted cornflakes reduces weight and cholesterol (if you eat it in a highly controlled setting each weekday for four weeks). Your comment however, reads exactly like you describe his, but for the opposite preference.
- PaulHoule 10y ago
  If anybody is telling you to eat when you are not hungry, check to see if they are selling something.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    This is the kind of thing that sounds right but makes absolutely no sense at all Exactly because the sense of hunger is not correlated with the exact need to eat is that we have obesity. Eating only when hungry sounds like a good idea but then you get (usually fat) people complaining they are hungry all the time. An average adult will spend around 12h (and probably more) physiologically fine without food, until its glycogen reserves are depleted.
ksk 10y ago
>"I don't eat breakfast, so here's the reasons why I'm right. Its more like "I don't eat breakfast, because I'm not hungry at that time". In your haste to paint the author as biased, you ended up sounding the same.
bluthru 10y ago
>The fact that research shows that breakfast is actually beneficial for children is hand-waved away because 'reasons'. As a casual observer of this topic, it seems like breakfast is necessary for humans who want to grow: kids and people adding muscle mass. If you want to lose weight or maintain breakfast can probably be skipped.
- a_small_island 10y ago
  >people adding muscle mass. There is a very large following of Intermittent Fasting in the bodybuilding community. Tens/hundreds of thousands of consistent weightlifters who do not eat breakfast or lunch and put on impressive mass. Your body doesn't care about daily fluctuations, calories in/calories out, count your macros. Fin. So I disagree with your casual conclusion.
  - bluthru 10y ago
    IF is great for reducing body fat percentage while increasing muscle mass, but someone starting the day with protein will increase muscle at a faster rate.
    - a_small_island 10y ago
      Of course you will be providing a source to this claim, right? right...? oh.
duaneb 10y ago
I think this is more of a refutation of "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day", not of the meal entirely.
amelius 10y ago
> The fact that research shows that breakfast is actually beneficial for children is hand-waved away because 'reasons'. It seems that your comment is equally handwavy :)

IIlllIllIIIIlII 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mikeash 10y ago
"X is good for you" is not typically a universal statement, but a probabilistic one. It doesn't have to be good for every single person in every single circumstance in order to be correct. It merely needs to be better for most people. For example, not being overweight is good for you. The existence of people who survive famine because they started out obese doesn't disprove that.
- IIlllIllIIIIlII 10y ago
  "Breakfast is good for you" implies that it has some benefit. In some cases, however, the cost of eating breakfast is greater than its benefit. For instance, if you have to get to work at 5am, are you better off waking up earlier to eat breakfast? In this case, the cost of lost sleep may be greater than the benefit of breakfast. The NYT article points out that many of the studies that claim breakfast is good may be flawed. If that's true, then we are likely overestimating the benefit of breakfast. And that means that in many cases where we thought perceived_benefit(breakfast) > cost(breakfast) it could actually be that real_benefit(breakfast) < cost(breakfast)
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Yes, of course. I don't disagree with that at all. I'm just saying that "breakfast is good for you" is not disproven merely by showing that it's not always good for you.
    - IIlllIllIIIIlII 10y ago
      my original thoughts were wrong. it makes more sense to use a cost/benefit function (ala economics) rather than a logical argument
      - mikeash 10y ago
        Gotcha. I think that's what I'm trying to say as well.
      - ethbro 10y ago
        Feel free to leave original comments up. No shame in knowledge or thoughts!
de_Selby 10y ago
I contend that lunch and dinner are also good for you. Can you apply the same logic there?
- arcticbull 10y ago
  Well, yes, that's why you have people investigating intermittent fasting. Some interesting results there too. It's good to question things.

jonknee 10y ago

Well there is no shortage of people who like breakfast (or are in charge of selling people breakfast) and hand wave about it being "the most important meal of the day". The truth is probably people have different metabolisms and if you are hungry in the morning you should eat and if you are not you shouldn't. And that's almost exactly what this post suggests: > The bottom line is that the evidence for the importance of breakfast is something of a mess. If you’re hungry, eat it. But don’t feel bad if you’d rather skip it, and don’t listen to those who lecture you. Breakfast has no mystical powers.

thomasahle 10y ago
And again other people may have metabolisms that need to be "kick started" in the morning by breakfast, to keep a stable bloodsugar level during the day.
- jonknee 10y ago
  No shit: > people have different metabolisms and if you are hungry in the morning you should eat and if you are not you shouldn't
  - lmm 10y ago
    People with the metabolism the grandparent describes don't feel hungry in the morning, but nevertheless should eat in the morning.
- fu9ar 10y ago
  Did you read the article or just head straight into posting this morning?
bgilroy26 10y ago
>The truth is probably people have different metabolisms and if you are hungry in the morning you should eat and if you are not you shouldn't. Bodies don't always cooperate, if you are going to exercise strenuously in a given day you had better eat some kind of breakfast whether your body feels like it or not. Breakfast is always going to be the opportunity to eat when you have more of the day ahead of you. That's true by definition, and it's the principle behind the chestnut about it being the most important meal of the day. There isn't much more to it than that.

coldtea 10y ago

>This reads like "I don't eat breakfast, so here's the reasons why I'm right." Actually he gives very reasoned arguments and comments on meta-studies showing that he is right -- not that breakfast is bad, but in that it doesn't make any difference, and if it does nobody has clearly shown it. (a) . In a paper published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2013, researchers reviewed the literature on the effect of breakfast on obesity to look specifically at this issue. They first noted that nutrition researchers love to publish results showing a correlation between skipping breakfast and obesity. (b) However, they also found major flaws in the reporting of findings. People were consistently biased in interpreting their results in favor of a relationship between skipping breakfast and obesity. They improperly used causal language to describe their results. They misleadingly cited others’ results. And they also improperly used causal language in citing others’ results. (c) Few randomized controlled trials exist. Those that do, although methodologically weak like most nutrition studies, don’t support the necessity of breakfast. (d) Further confusing the field is a 2014 study (with more financial conflicts of interest than I thought possible) that found that getting breakfast skippers to eat breakfast, and getting breakfast eaters to skip breakfast, made no difference with respect to weight loss. But a 1992 trial that did the same thing found that both groups lost weight. A balanced perspective would acknowledge that we have no idea what’s going on. (e) Many of the studies are funded by the food industry, which has a clear bias. Kellogg funded a highly cited article that found that cereal for breakfast is associated with being thinner. The Quaker Oats Center of Excellence (part of PepsiCo) financed a trial that showed that eating oatmeal or frosted cornflakes reduces weight and cholesterol (if you eat it in a highly controlled setting each weekday for four weeks). Your comment however, reads exactly like you describe his, but for the opposite preference.

PaulHoule 10y ago
If anybody is telling you to eat when you are not hungry, check to see if they are selling something.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  This is the kind of thing that sounds right but makes absolutely no sense at all Exactly because the sense of hunger is not correlated with the exact need to eat is that we have obesity. Eating only when hungry sounds like a good idea but then you get (usually fat) people complaining they are hungry all the time. An average adult will spend around 12h (and probably more) physiologically fine without food, until its glycogen reserves are depleted.

ksk 10y ago

>"I don't eat breakfast, so here's the reasons why I'm right. Its more like "I don't eat breakfast, because I'm not hungry at that time". In your haste to paint the author as biased, you ended up sounding the same.

bluthru 10y ago

>The fact that research shows that breakfast is actually beneficial for children is hand-waved away because 'reasons'. As a casual observer of this topic, it seems like breakfast is necessary for humans who want to grow: kids and people adding muscle mass. If you want to lose weight or maintain breakfast can probably be skipped.

a_small_island 10y ago
>people adding muscle mass. There is a very large following of Intermittent Fasting in the bodybuilding community. Tens/hundreds of thousands of consistent weightlifters who do not eat breakfast or lunch and put on impressive mass. Your body doesn't care about daily fluctuations, calories in/calories out, count your macros. Fin. So I disagree with your casual conclusion.
- bluthru 10y ago
  IF is great for reducing body fat percentage while increasing muscle mass, but someone starting the day with protein will increase muscle at a faster rate.
  - a_small_island 10y ago
    Of course you will be providing a source to this claim, right? right...? oh.

duaneb 10y ago

I think this is more of a refutation of "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day", not of the meal entirely.

amelius 10y ago

> The fact that research shows that breakfast is actually beneficial for children is hand-waved away because 'reasons'. It seems that your comment is equally handwavy :)