You’ve probably been told by your parents that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It’s such a ubiquitous phrase that it’s almost cliche. What is less commonly known, is the origin of this pervasive phrase. The Daily Telegraph credits dietitian Lenna Cooper with using this phrase in a 1917 article for Good Health magazine, which was published by a Michigan sanitarium operated by Kellogg’s. Cereal genius Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and fellow 7th Day Adventist James Caleb Jackson created the slogan in an effort to promote breakfast cereal. It clearly worked. The food giant made $1.4 billion U.S. dollars in profit in 2019 from its cereals. Does breakfast really provide the ‘best possible start’ to the day, or is fasting better for us? A report published in 2019 by the Journal of the American College of Cardiology concluded that skipping breakfast was associated with a significantly increased risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2019.01.065 Following the publication of this report, the following headlines were produced by 3 major news outlets: “Want to Lower Your Risk for Heart Disease? Eat Breakfast Every Morning” (Healthline) “Eating breakfast? Skipping a morning meal has a higher risk of heart-related death, study says” (USA TODAY) “Study: Skipping breakfast increases risk of heart disease mortality by 87 percent” (FOX) Looks like we all need to reach for a bowl of cereal as soon as we get out of bed right? Absolutely not! It’s time to review this report critically instead. This report was produced as a result of the findings from a prospective cohort study looking at 6,550 adults who reportedly ate breakfast every day to people who never ate breakfast, and then following up with them (about 19 years later on average), tallying up the deaths from cardiovascular disease and deaths from all causes. One question the newspapers failed to ask/report on about the population studies is: was eating breakfast or not eating breakfast the only difference between the 6,550 adults who took part in this study? The authors of the study reported that “participants who never consumed breakfast were more likely to be non-hispanic black, former smokers, heavy drinkers, unmarried, physically inactive, and with less family income, lower total energy intake, and poorer dietary quality when compared with those who regularly ate breakfast.”

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