Well is it?
I (like most people) sure don’t put as much thought into it as other meals. Dinner last night was grilled ribs, mashed potatoes and peas. It took an hour to cook and quite some effort. To contrast, breakfast was honey nut cheerios and it took less than one minute to prepare.
Where did this idea that breakfast is so important come from?
Generally, the biggest time gap from meal to meal is dinner to breakfast-as much as 12 hours. You have some catching up to do replenishing glycogen stores besides the opportunity for taking in nutrition. Skip or skimp breakfast and you only have two meals to bet your RDAs of everything.
The idea came from Kellogg, the original health food nut, who along with Post and Graham created nut job food cureall systems, and health food mainstays.
It’s what you get used to, when I was young I was pretty stretched for cash and I worked at hotels and they gave you a free meal, at lunch, breakfast or dinner, whichever came when you were working. So I wound up eating one huge meal a day to minimize food cost. Now some 25 years later, I still eat basically one meal a day, (Like the family dog :)) I get by with no issues.
Why would he/she only have two meals to get their daily nutrition?
You get energy in one of two ways:
From chemical reactions in your stomach or intestines, breaking down calories from any food that is there.
From the breakdown of stored energy in fat or muscle.
If you don’t have #1, your body automatically goes to #2. After you wake up, your digestive tract has usually cleared the stomach and intestines, thus it will go for #2 unless you eat something.
Therefore, to prevent the breakdown of muscle/fat, you must eat breakfast.
However, I haven’t eaten breakfast for the past 20 years, and I’m fine.
edit: and for many years I went with the one big meal a day as stated earlier, and I’m fine.
Hardly eat breakfast during the week - a cup of coffee will do nicely - though I love a full English to get rid of a hangover and I also like a nice long sunday breakfast with friends and family.
I eat breakfast/lunch when I feel hungry. I spend much more time on dinner. I’m fine.
You don’t get energy from the breakdown of food in your stomach or intestines. The products of digestion are absorbed into the bloodstream, and metabolized by cells throughout the body to yield “energy”.
It depends on what your nutritional and/or dietary goals are.
If you’re trying to cut fat, lose your “gut”, or build muscle, then it’s very important.
Do you have to eat breakfast in order to accomplish these goals? Certainly not. But if you don’t, you’re just creating an uphill battle for yourself.
There’s a few reasons behind this. First, the thinking is that if you skip breakfast, you’ll be hungrier come lunch time, and thus, you will eat more.
Also, the time between your last dinner and your next meal (presumably lunch) is roughly 16 hours. (Let’s assume you ate dinner at 8:00 P.M., then ate lunch the following day at 12:00 P.M.)
That’s a long time to go without food. Your body will go into fat preservation mode. To what degree will greatly vary among individuals. Some can tolerate it better than others.
Lastly, it’s widely believed that it’s better to eat several small meals than a couple of large meals. Your body can only take in so many calories. All the excess gets stored as fat.
So the belief is don’t give your body any excess calories and it won’t store any as fat. This is accomplished by eating only small meals spread throughout the day.
But, like I mentioned, if not you’re dieting or trying to lose weight, and you’ve been skipping breakfast for years, then it’s not really an issue.