A grown-up look at breakfast

Breakfast is the most heavily marketed meal of the day. It is not, despite the slogan, automatically the most important. The truth is more interesting and more useful: what you eat in the morning matters, but when, and even whether, you eat is far more flexible than the cereal aisle would have you believe.

Where the slogan came from.

The phrase 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day' was popularised in the early 1900s — by a cereal manufacturer. The science has been catching up, and qualifying it, ever since.

What the evidence actually shows.

The honest summary of the research, including a well-known 2019 review in the BMJ, is that eating breakfast does not by itself cause weight loss, and skipping it does not by itself cause weight gain. What appears to matter is the overall quality of the day's eating, total intake, and how stable your energy and appetite are.

Who tends to do better with breakfast.

Women in perimenopause and beyond, women managing blood sugar issues, anyone with a tendency to crash in the late morning, and anyone who finds themselves overeating in the evening usually do better with a real, protein-led breakfast within a couple of hours of waking. It steadies the day.

Who tends to do fine without it.

Women who are simply not hungry in the morning, who eat a substantial lunch, and whose energy and mood are stable through to midday usually do not need to force breakfast. Coffee and a glass of water are a perfectly reasonable start to the day for some bodies.

What a good breakfast looks like.

If you do eat in the morning, build it around protein, fibre and a little fat. That combination is the one most likely to keep your blood sugar steady and your appetite quiet until lunch.

• Greek yoghurt with berries, seeds and a spoonful of nut butter.
• Two or three eggs with sautéed greens and a slice of sourdough.
• Overnight oats made with milk or soy milk, chia, and topped with fruit and yoghurt.
• Cottage cheese on rye toast with sliced tomato, olive oil and black pepper.
• Last night's roasted vegetables warmed up with a fried egg on top.

What an unhelpful breakfast looks like.

The classic problem breakfast is a bowl of low-fibre cereal with skimmed milk, or toast with jam and a glass of juice. They are pleasant. They are also almost pure carbohydrate. For most women they create a sharp blood sugar peak followed by a sharp drop, which arrives as the 11am slump and the urgent need for biscuits.

The actual rule.

There is no universal breakfast rule. There is only this: pay attention to how you feel by mid-morning. If you are calm, energetic and not raiding the kitchen at 11am, your breakfast — or absence of it — is working. If you are foggy, irritable or ravenous, something needs to change. Usually that something is more protein, earlier.