Can I skip breakfast?
“I think everyone should consider skipping breakfast as an experiment,” says Professor Tim Spector, author of the recently reissued Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food Is Wrong. The question of whether breakfast is or isn’t good for us has been around for years – with the waters thoroughly muddied by research funded by breakfast cereal brands like Kellogg’s and Quakers. (You can guess what they concluded.)
“We’ve been told, culturally – and via marketing – that we have to have it,” says Spector. But a 2020 US study from the National Institute of Aging suggests that intermittent fasting – which can mean skipping or postponing breakfast – may have health benefits.
After spending time with a hunter-gatherer group in Tanzania, the Hadza, Spector is unconvinced about the need for breakfast: “I never saw anyone eating before about 10.30am, although they’d been up since dawn. They didn’t have a word for breakfast.”
Spector’s advice? “Try skipping breakfast once or twice, just to see how you feel at…
