If that’s not you, then strap in, because the modern tale of breakfast in Britain is a bizarre and often baffling one. Before blowing this breakfast myth open, however, a caveat: experimenting with skipping breakfast is not advisable if you are young, have struggled with eating disorders, or have any other special dietary requirements. Indeed, subsequent meta-analysis of some of the studies behind those claims has suggested the reverse. “It’s one of the NHS’s eight tips for healthy eating that we shouldn’t skip it, but there’s no data to support that,” he continues. In short, what Spector has dubbed “the breakfast myth” is itself “up for grabs”. It works for some people, and doesn’t work for others.” A lot of the science about eating early in the day is becoming shakier and shakier. “There’s been very little research into it.

There isn’t much evidence that people 500 years ago ate breakfast. “There isn’t much evidence that hunter-gatherer tribes ate breakfast. “Breakfast itself is a relatively new invention,” says Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and author of Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food Is Wrong. Indeed, our notion of breakfast in this country – of a quick, carb-based morning meal being a nutritional necessity – is largely the result of messaging by cereal manufacturers and the dairy industry, loosely supported by some questionable studies. Much of what we think we know about the first meal of the day is mistaken, and there are questions that we should all be asking before we reach for those old familiar packets.ĭoes All-Bran really improve gut health? Is Rude Health muesli actually healthier? Do instant oats really give you all the benefits of oats in a quick and convenient microwaveable packet? Beliefs about breakfast cereals fuelled by the makers of breakfast cereals have, over time, become gospel. The most celebrated – some would say notorious – expression of our national obsession, the Full English Breakfast, has become a totemic presence on hotel and restaurant menus: a fried form of the national identity, with red or brown sauce on the side.īut experts in diet, nutrition and the history of food suggest that many of our most cherished beliefs about breakfast are quite wrong, the result of a still-tumbling avalanche of marketing by mass manufacturers keen to have us consume their processed and often salt- and sugar-laden products. We tend to be more entrenched in our beliefs about this meal than any other, both about its importance and about the merits and identity of constituent parts, and it is the medium for fierce debate about local traditions and ingredients. The hold that breakfast exerts on our national imagination is strange and powerful.

Bill phillips back to fit meal plan