We’ve all heard the expression “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”, but is breakfast actually the most important meal of the day? Since a young age, we have been told that eating breakfast is vital for optimal health, boosting our metabolism, increasing energy, and supporting weight loss, but is it true? The answer to this question is both yes and no, because the truth is, it truly depends on the individual and their personal goals.

The Origin of Breakfast is the Most Important Meal of the Day

You may be surprised to learn that the origins of “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” are not quite as scientific as you may think. In fact, prior to this concept, breakfast wasn’t a particularly important meal; there were no specific “breakfast foods”, people simply ate what was available, which was usually leftovers from the night before, and meal schedules were determined by farm work and labor. It was not until the late 19th century that the perfect storm of events helped to give breakfast its “most important meal” designation.

During the growth of the Industrial Revolution, people began to move from farm labor to a factory and office jobs where they spent less time moving around. People began to worry about indigestion caused by large farm breakfasts and, as more and more women entered the workforce, the need for light, quick and convenient meals began to grow, alongside a healthier living fad that was slowly increasing in popularity.

It was at this same time that James Caleb Jackson and John Harvey Kellogg were in the midst of introducing their newly invented breakfast cereal. Jackson, a preacher, and Kellogg, a religious man, believed that masturbation was the greatest evil of their time, and that bland, tasteless, healthy foods could help to prevent it. It was through their religious beliefs that Corn Flakes were invented and, paired with good marketing, the line “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” was popularized. From there, the bacon and egg industries jumped on the bandwagon and the importance of eating breakfast rapidly increased in popularity.

So, Is Breakfast the Most Important Meal of the Day?

As with all things in nutrition, it depends. Just because you skip breakfast does not mean that you will gain 10 pounds and destroy your metabolism. Eating well is all about context, not a general set of rules that work for everyone. Although some observational studies have shown that breakfast skippers are more likely to be obese than people who eat breakfast, other studies have shown that there is no difference as long as total food volume is controlled. Unfortunately, these observational studies do not address causality: are people who skip breakfast more likely to have a higher BMI, or are people with a higher BMI more likely to skip breakfast as part of a weight-loss strategy or for other reasons?

Although there is no direct evidence that breakfast is actually the most important meal of the day, there are some reasons why eating breakfast, specifically a well-balanced one, can help to support your personal goals.

Signs Breakfast IS the Most Important Meal of the Day

When it comes to breakfast, what works best for one person will not necessarily work best for another. Rather, what is important is that you pay attention to your personal hunger cues and body to figure out what works best for you. So, in an effort to help point you in the right direction, here are some signs that eating breakfast is in your best interest:

1. You find yourself less productive and more lethargic when you don’t eat breakfast.

2. You have more sugar cravings when you don’t eat breakfast.

3. You snack more in the afternoon and evening when you don’t eat breakfast.

4. You train early in the morning and need a post-workout recovery meal.

Signs Breakfast IS NOT the Most Important Meal of the Day

On the contrary, there are some signs that eating breakfast may not be vital. In fact, there are many benefits to increasing the time between meals, and for those with balanced blood sugar and minimal cravings, there may be no issue with skipping breakfast at all.  For instance:

1. You don’t notice a difference in energy or productivity whether you eat breakfast or not.

2. You are able to eat well-balanced meals throughout the day whether you eat breakfast or not.

3. You don’t notice increased cravings whether you eat breakfast or not.

4. You’re truly not hungry in the morning.

The Bottom Line

So, is breakfast the most important meal of the day? The short answer is no. When you choose to eat your meals is far less important than what you choose to eat, as food quality will always trump meal timing. Skipping breakfast does not have any direct detrimental effects on health, however, for certain individuals, it can help to create healthy habits, limit snacking, and overeating, and, in turn, support optimal health. At the end of the day, whether you eat breakfast or not is dependent on your personal goals, so feel free to play around (but pay attention) to figure out what works best for you.

There is a lot of conflicting advice about optimal meal timing and how often you should eat. Should you eat less often? More often? Mini meals? Or larger meals? Some experts argue that you should eat every two to three hours, while others suggest limiting it to three times per day, but what is actually the best option? The truth is, there is no best option and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. As with everything in nutrition, when it comes to how often you should eat it all depends on what works best for you.

How Often Should You Eat?

The confusion about meal frequency was brought on by the theory that eating multiple mini-meals per day can help to “boost” your metabolism and, therefore, support weight loss and weight management. This theory was thought to be true given that the natural process of digestion raises the body’s metabolism slightly, known as the thermic effect of food, and therefore it was believed that eating less food more often would keep your metabolism elevated. By this logic it was also believed that by keeping your metabolism elevated throughout the day you would be able to increase your total energy expenditure, however, the idea that eating smaller meals more frequently increases metabolic rate is largely overstated.

Although it is true that digestion does raise metabolism slightly, the total amount of energy (or calories) burned through digestion is so minimal that it has little to no impact on the total amount of energy burned throughout the day. Instead, it is, in fact, the total amount of food consumed that determines the amount of energy expended during digestion, not its frequency. Evidence shows that, given an equal amount of daily food intake (or calories), the number of meals consumed per day makes no difference in fat loss. So, whether you choose to eat 300 calories six times per day or 600 calories 3 times per day has little to no impact on metabolism and weight loss.

What about snacking?

Can, or should, you eat snacks between meals? The answer to this question is simple; it depends entirely on the snack that you choose and how much you are going to eat. Given that meal frequency matters much less than the total volume of food that you eat, how you decide to break things up is completely up to you. If you opt to snack on junk food, sweets, and high-fat treats it may impact your overall food intake (i.e. increase total calories) which is far more problematic than the fact that you have increased the frequency of your food consumption. On the contrary, if you opt to snack on whole foods that fit into your ideal food intake, there is absolutely no problem with the increased frequency of meals.

Should you skip meals?

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Skipping meals causes weight gain. Skipping meals puts your body in starvation mode. We’ve all heard these lines before, but are they true? In short, no. Just because you skip breakfast or miss lunch does not mean that you will gain 10 pounds and destroy your metabolism. Eating well is all about context, not a general set of rules that work for everyone.

Yes, some observational studies have shown that breakfast skippers are more likely to be obese than people who eat breakfast, but correlation does not equal causation. There are in fact thousands of reasons why this correlation can be made. Perhaps people who skip breakfast tend to eat more processed food? Perhaps people who skip breakfast tend to exercise less? Perhaps people who skip breakfast tend to eat more desserts? Perhaps people who skip breakfast tend to have a family history of obesity? Or perhaps people who skip breakfast just don’t care and this works for their life.

In fact, while some studies show a correlation between weight gain and those that skip meals, other studies show no difference as long as total food volume is controlled. So, although skipping meals is often looked at as a negative, it can be positive if the reason you are skipping meals is that you are listening to your own body and your own hunger cues. It’s important to keep in mind that some days you will be more hungry and other days you will be less hungry. Your body is not a perfect science or a perfect equation with specific intakes you must adhere to. Your body and its needs will vary from day to day so paying attention to these needs are far more important than whether you skip a meal or not.

What and Why You Eat is More Important than When

The fact of the matter is that what you eat and why you eat are much more important than when you eat. The foundation of any good diet comes down to the quality of the food that you eat and has much less to do with when you are eating it. You are much better off eating whole foods six times per day than eating processed food three times a day because food quality will always trump frequency.

Not to mention, why you are choosing to eat these foods is also important. Learning to practice mindful eating (i.e. Am I actually hungry or am I just bored, tired, stressed, or emotionally eating?) is one of the biggest tools that you can add to your healthy eating toolkit. There is nothing wrong with eating if you are hungry, in fact, your body is the best nutrition coach you will ever have which is why learning to listen to it is so important. There is also nothing wrong with eating to celebrate or mourn, but once in a while. If you are constantly eating to suppress or deal with your emotions that is another conversation entirely, but the first step will always be to focus on the quality of the food that you eat and why you are choosing to eat it.

So, How Often Should You Eat?

So, what’s the answer? Should you six times a day? Should you eat three times a day? And should you skip meals? Truthfully, there is no right answer. The right answer is the answer that works best for you and your life. As a practitioner, I encourage people to focus on eating well-balanced meals that keep them full and only include snacks as needed. I encourage people to bring mindfulness to their meals, sit down, chew, and slow down when they eat, and pay attention to emotional triggers that may be causing them to reach for food when they are not truly hungry. Although it may seem quite radical, the best suggestion is simple; listen to your body, eat when you are hungry, stop when you are full, and repeat.

If you’ve read the ingredients or looked at the food label on any packaged good, you’ve undoubtedly seen the term “natural flavor”, but have you ever wondered what that actually means? Although many people assume natural flavors are simply that; the flavor from a natural source, that is not exactly the case. In fact, natural flavors and artificial flavors have a lot more in common than you may think. So, allow me to break down the research on natural flavors to help you determine if you should be consuming them or not.

What is natural flavor?

According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, natural flavors are “substances that impart flavors that have been derived from a plant or animal source”, while the FDA defines natural flavors as “the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.”

While all of that nutrition jargon may seem rather confusing, there are two key points to take away from these definitions; natural flavors must come from plant or animal sources, and natural flavors are created through some form of processing.

Natural Flavors vs. Artificial Flavors

Although one might assume that natural flavors and artificial flavors are very different that is not the case. Natural and artificial flavors are both food additives that food manufacturers can use to flavor food, however, the primary difference between the two is the source from which they are made. Both natural and artificial flavors are created through chemical processes and are manufactured in a lab by a ‘flavorist’, the only difference is the fact that artificial flavors are made from synthetic sources while natural flavors must be made from plant or animal sources.

Understandably, this difference can be confusing to consumers given how similar in nature they actually are. The difference really comes down to the origin of the molecule that was used to create the flavor; was it natural or synthetic? For instance, the same way you can make a shirt out of polyester or cotton, you can make an apple drink out of artificial apple flavor or natural apple flavor. Although the end flavor may be similar, the source used to create it is very different. Simply put, natural flavors are made from natural sources, but the format in which you are consuming them is not necessarily.

Where do natural flavors come from?

Although many natural flavors originate from the flavor they provide, not all-natural flavors are derived from their natural source. Although there are natural flavors that come directly from the corresponding source, there are hundreds of natural flavors that have been created by food chemists that are in fact from a natural source, but not of the flavor which they are creating. For example, amyl acetate is a compound distilled from bananas to create banana flavor, while natural coconut flavor is made from a compound called massoya lactone which comes from the bark of the Massoya tree grown in Malaysia, while natural vanilla flavor is sometimes made from the slightly sweet substance found in the anal secretions of beavers. Albeit all of the flavors are natural in some way, shape, or form, they may not be the natural form of the flavor they are providing.

What foods contain natural flavors?

The use of natural flavors by food manufacturers is so common that they are the fourth most common ingredient listed on food labels. Natural flavors are found in all types of food products and supplements including sauces, cereals, granola bars, herbal teas, flavored waters, juices, protein powders, and greens powders, just to name a few.

At this time, the only way to determine if a product contains natural flavor is to read the ingredients, however, the most confusing part is that we are unable to determine what the actual source of natural flavor in a product is because food manufacturers aren’t required to list these exact ingredients. Although we can assume that the flavor is from a natural source, it is impossible to determine the specific source without asking the food manufacturer directly.

So, should we eat natural flavors?

Generally speaking, there is little if any information or studies on the impact of natural flavors, and without knowing the exact source of the natural flavor in question it is certainly tough to say. However, as with most food additives, it would be safe to assume that the concern is with the dose. Consumed from time to time in small amounts I don’t see natural flavor being a large concern. As always, the foundation of any good diet is centered around whole foods, and if this is the case, a bit of natural flavor sprinkled in should not be too much of a problem.