The jury is out, eating breakfast — or not?

New health study backs breakfast, but some call it a marketing scam

Skipping breakfast or eating late in the day could raise the risk of heart disease, diabetes and obesity, according to a new study that suggests the time we eat our meal is equally as important as what we eat.

Writing in American Heart Association journal Circulation, researchers at Columbia University said meal times and frequency are linked to risk factors for a variety of conditions including heart disease, strokes, high blood pressure, blood glucose levels, obesity and reduced insulin sensitivity.

The researchers reviewed other current scientific studies on breakfast and heart disease and found that people who eat breakfast daily are less likely to have high cholesterol and blood pressure.

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Those who skip breakfast and instead snack throughout the day are more likely to be obese, have poor nutrition or be diagnosed with diabetes.

They analysed other research findings that found people who skip breakfast have a 27% higher risk of suffering heart attacks and are 18% likelier to have strokes.

Professor Marie-Pierre St-Onge, lead author of the study, said meal timing may affect health due to its impact on the body's internal clock.

"In animal studies, it appears that when animals receive food while in an inactive phase, such as when they are sleeping, their internal clocks are reset in a way that can alter nutrient metabolism, resulting in greater weight gain, insulin resistance and inflammation," she said.

"However, more research would have to be done in humans before that can be stated as a fact."

There is still debate in the scientific community about the benefits of breakfast. A 2016 study suggested there was little scientific basis for claims that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.

Dr James Betts, a senior lecturer in nutrition at the University of Bath, said the idea that breakfast was inherently good for people may stem from marketing campaigns designed to sell cereals, eggs and bacon. The "benefits" of eating early had not actually been scrutinised properly.

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He said: "The problem is that these benefits, although logical sounding, are largely assumptions based on observational studies and have never actually been tested.

"As soon as doctors find out that an overweight patient skips breakfast they'll often tell them to make sure they eat it every day. But should we not know more about the health effects? We try not to give other health advice without evidence, so why are we more lax with breakfast?"

The Columbia University researchers writing in Circulation also found that eating late at night could lead to a greater risk of poor cardiometabolic health.

In one of the studies analysed, it was found that late-night snackers are more likely to be obese when compared to those who don't eat after a certain hour.

The researchers wrote: "The impact of meal timing, particularly related to the evening meal, deserves further study.

"Epidemiological findings suggest a potential detrimental effect of late meals on cardiometabolic health, but clinical intervention studies, which would address causality, have been limited in scope and too diverse to draw definitive conclusions and make recommendations."

St-Onge added: "We suggest eating mindfully, by paying attention to planning both what you eat and when you eat meals and snacks, to combat emotional eating.

"Many people find that emotions can trigger eating episodes when they are not hungry, which often leads to eating too many calories from foods that have low nutritional value."