According to some polls, 25 percent of Americans skip breakfast. Of the remaining 75 percent, many of them eat breakfast less than three times a week. Whether people are not hungry, are intermittently fasting, or trying to lose weight, breakfast is the most popular meal to skip. But Mom said breakfast was the most important meal of the day!
Mom isn’t the only one promoting breakfast eating. “It is the custom and order of society to take a slight breakfast. … At breakfast time the stomach is in a better condition to take care of more food than at the second or third meal of the day. The habit of eating a sparing breakfast and a large dinner is wrong. Make your breakfast correspond more nearly to the heartiest meal of the day.”1
The idea that our bodies are in a better condition to take care of more food at breakfast is based on the fact that we are most insulin sensitive in the morning and less insulin sensitive in the evening. That means our bodies are better able to manage the fuel we get from food in the morning. Less insulin is required to maintain healthy blood sugars, and it has better communication with muscle, fat, and liver cells in the morning, when they’re fresh.
Though small, I found the following study fascinating: Nine young, healthy Japanese men, ages 19 to 24 participated in the trial and none of them had any previous history of obesity or abnormal blood sugars. In the first part of the study, the young men were given breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They wore a 24-hour glucometer that consistently measured their blood sugar levels throughout the day and night. Free fatty acids in the blood were also measured throughout the day, as well as C-peptide, which is a marker for how much insulin is being produced.
After a one-week break, they engaged in the second phase of the study, and this time, the nine men skipped breakfast, while their lunch and dinner meals were exactly the same as they were in the first phase of the trial.
On the breakfast-eating day, blood glucose levels, free fatty levels, and insulin levels followed a very normal pattern of mildly rising after each meal, and then declining. On the breakfast-skipping day, however, the researchers observed that though blood sugar was flat as a result of no food, it spiked significantly higher after lunch, compared with when they ate breakfast. Their Insulin/C-peptide peak was higher, as well, and delayed 30 minutes after lunch on the breakfast-skipping day, compared with the three-meal day. Blood levels of free fatty acids was elevated the whole morning while they were fasting, and rose significantly higher after lunch, when breakfast was skipped!
The researchers observed that a single incident of breakfast-skipping resulted in much higher blood sugar and impaired insulin response after lunch. They attributed this to the development of insulin resistance in the liver, increased glucose production by the liver, and impaired insulin response.2 Skipping breakfast negatively affected glucose regulation—even in healthy, young individuals.
The Bible says, “He who keeps instruction is in the way of life” (Proverbs 10:17), and “reproofs of instruction are the way of life” (Proverbs 6:23). I have had to admit that Mom was right several times in my life. Receiving the counsel of others and then making it your own is, as the Bible says, the way of life.
1. Ellen G. White, Child Guidance (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1954), p. 390.
2. Hitomi Ogata et al., “Association between Breakfast Skipping and Postprandial Hyperglycaemia after Lunch in Healthy Young Individuals.” British Journal of Nutrition 122, no. 04 (August 28, 2019): 431–40. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31486356/)
