"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, i

"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)