NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather forecasts

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
    • The Great NZ Road Trip
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
    • Cooking the Books
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • What the Actual
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Lifestyle

Why skipping breakfast may be good for you

By Tim Spector
Herald online·
23 Feb, 2016 08:45 PM6 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

business man eating breakfast with mobile

business man eating breakfast with mobile

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day - that's what we are told and most of us would probably agree.

Its importance in fighting obesity has been endorsed by global gurus, including the U.S. Surgeon General.

Part of the same dogma is that we should eat smaller amounts of food at regular intervals - "grazing" - to avoid spikes in blood sugar and the subsequent lows, which lead to over-eating and weight gain. But these are nutritional myths unsubstantiated by any good trials. The fact is: skipping breakfast is perfectly fine.

For many people, the idea of going without food for more than a few hours will seem odd, but the reality is that we fast regularly - for ten to 12 hours overnight without any problems, and fasting is also a tenet of many religions.

Many of us feel we can never skip breakfast, let alone manage without eating for more than four hours in the day, without feeling faint, complaining of a "hypo" and reaching for a chocolate biscuit.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Yet 30 per cent of Europeans and Americans regularly flout this advice - so are they risking their health?

In Southern European countries, which have higher rates of skipping the first meal of the day, "breakfast" is often a quick espresso by the bus stop.

Despite this "risky behaviour", they are generally healthier and don't faint or binge-eat before lunch.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

So why do we think breakfast is so important? Put simply: indoctrination and lobbying from the breakfast cereal companies, compounded by a whole series of poor-quality research.

These studies, often reported in the media, showed that people who skipped breakfast regularly were, on average, more likely to be obese, had higher blood sugar levels and were more likely to over-eat later in the day.

The problem with these studies (and this, sadly, exemplifies studies in the field of nutrition that tend to reinforce dogma) is that they don't show how skipping breakfast might cause obesity.

Furthermore, studies showing a link between obesity and missing the meal are biased by the bad habits of many breakfast skippers: we know they are more likely to be less well-educated and ignore health advice, eat less fibre, smoke and avoid sport.

Discover more

Lifestyle

What your morning habits reveal about you

16 Mar 08:26 PM

All of which can lead to obesity and poor health regardless of breakfast.

The real and convincing evidence of the effects of skipping breakfast comes from long-overdue clinical trials. These avoid bias as they allocate people at random to eat or skip breakfast - this way, unhealthy people are split between the groups.

There have been six randomised studies - five in the past two years.

And guess what? There was no evidence of any weight gain or metabolic problems such as type 2 diabetes.

Indeed, in four of the six trials, the breakfast skippers - who, overall, were eating less - lost weight, contrary to expectations.

(While it's been reported that children could suffer mentally at school if they don't have breakfast, the evidence is equally weak and biased and we are still awaiting proper trials.)
Clearly, as in all studies, these are averages, and some people will feel they really need their breakfast while others don't. Some of this is cultural and some may be genetic.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The studies we've done with twins at King's College London have shown a clear gene influence on whether you are a morning person or an evening person, and these body-clock rhythms undoubtedly affect the times we prefer to eat.

So we should probably let our bodies guide our choice of having breakfast, rather than dubious studies and dogma.

The three-meals-a-day routine is a modern invention, only coming to the West in the Victorian era.

We don't know for sure, but suspect our early ancestors had only one main meal a day, as stopping to set up picnic tables at noon in the middle of a hunt would have been tricky.

The Ancient Greeks, Persians, Romans and early Jews all ate one big meal per day - usually in the evening, to celebrate the day's work.

In England, it wasn't until the 16th century that two meals were introduced.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

A proverb at the time proclaimed this was the healthy new recipe for long life: "To rise at six, dine at ten, sup at six and go to bed at ten makes a man live ten times ten."

The habit of two meals a day was still the norm in the 19th century even among the upper-classes, and only changed recently.

Increasing our fasting periods by cutting out some meals could be better for us, even if we consumed the same daily calories.

A 2007 U.S. government study explored this, with 21 volunteers given the same food content and calories over eight weeks as one giant meal a day or three, small, divided meals. Then, after a break, the volunteers swapped.

Throughout the six-month period, each volunteer's weight remained within 2 kg of their initial figure.

There were no significant differences in heart rate, body temperature or most blood tests.
As expected, the single meal produced more feelings of hunger, but also significant reductions in body fat and in the stress hormone cortisol.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

So there is no evidence that skipping two meals will do you any harm and may have benefits.

Even a Mediterranean style of eating, ie, two main meals, regardless of calories, looks to be healthy.

It could be that the benefits of fasting lie in its effect on the trillions of healthy microbes in our guts.

The latest research shows that our gut bacteria undergo major changes during fasting, with a brief surge in bacterial species resulting in a helpful cleaning process for our gut lining - improving our immune defences and reducing the risk of obesity and diabetes.

This could be the key to the success of intermittent fasting diets such as the 5:2, which trials have shown help with weight loss and improve blood profile (such as blood sugar and cholesterol).

It's time to bury the fasting myth for good and let our bodies - not wealthy food companies - decide if we want to skip breakfast.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

* Tim Spector is a professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London and author of The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat.

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Lifestyle

Premium
Lifestyle

The sleep trends experts think you should (and shouldn’t) try

12 May 06:00 AM
Premium
World

USA: 4000 miles, 6 small towns: a whistle-stop tour of America

12 May 02:06 AM
Premium
Royals

Can King Charles heal a royal family crisis before it’s too late?

12 May 01:35 AM

Sponsored: How much is too much?

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Lifestyle

Premium
The sleep trends experts think you should (and shouldn’t) try

The sleep trends experts think you should (and shouldn’t) try

12 May 06:00 AM

New York Times: Mouth tape, melatonin, “worry journals” - do they actually help?

Premium
USA: 4000 miles, 6 small towns: a whistle-stop tour of America

USA: 4000 miles, 6 small towns: a whistle-stop tour of America

12 May 02:06 AM
Premium
Can King Charles heal a royal family crisis before it’s too late?

Can King Charles heal a royal family crisis before it’s too late?

12 May 01:35 AM
Bindi Irwin rushed to hospital in emergency

Bindi Irwin rushed to hospital in emergency

11 May 10:20 PM
Sponsored: Cosy up to colour all year
sponsored

Sponsored: Cosy up to colour all year

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • What the Actual
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven CarGuide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP