Maybe skipping breakfast isn’t so bad for you after all

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In the world of nutrition, breakfast – and whether or not it should be eaten – is quickly becoming a very contentious (not to mention confusing) topic.

It’s long been touted as the Most Important Meal of the Day, and numerous studies have linked a daily breakfast habit with better health outcomes.

However, a new study from Melbourne’s Monash University suggests this might not be the case; that giving breakfast a miss might actually help with weight loss and fatty liver disease.

Now, we’re not telling you to give up breakfast, but this is some interesting food for thought. So hold on to your museli, brekky lovers.

The research team studied 32 patients, all of whom had been diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease – an illness affecting more than 5.5 million Australians. During the trial, half of the patients were put on a daily routine involving a standard diet and exercise, while the other half were required to fast between 8pm and midday.

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Despite the variance in the routines, there was no difference in kilojoule intake, activity levels, hunger levels or quality of life experienced between the two groups. While all patients lost weight over the initial 12 weeks of the study, the patients who fasted reduced their waist circumference, an area commonly used to measure a reduction in liver damage.

They also indicated improvements in insulin resistance, blood pressure, abdominal fat as well as additional measures of liver damage.

Alex Hodge, a Melbourne gastroenterologist who worked on the study, told The Age the findings showed promise for overcoming Australia’s obesity and fatty liver disease epidemic.

“Despite the small numbers of participants in this novel study, there was a significant health benefit from intermittent fasting,” he said to The Age.

The additional stages of the study required the two groups to reverse the routines for the 12 more weeks. Patients moving from the standard diet and exercise routine to fasting showed continual improvements. But, for the half of the patients, weight gain started when they stopped the fasting routine.

“What it really shows is that eating over a shorter period of time has added benefits, even though people actually ate the same amount of calories in the study as they did before but they just ate them over a shorter period of time,” Dr Hodge told Yahoo 7.

He also said that the 16 hours of fasting was a simpler and easier alternative to counting kilojoules.

Do you eat breakfast every day?