Probably not.
On the one hand, we do not want our kids to go to school on an empty stomach.
At least two studies found teens and high schhool students to be more alert and performing better after eating breakfast.
But what about grownups? You've heard those patronizing sentences from doctors and dieticians telling us we have to eat three meals a day, and that we must eat breakfast to stay healthy. But is there any evidence for that ?
Not much.
So why is it that dieticians and physicians insist on a meal before starting your day ? It is because of observational publishings, meaning from population statistics and not from active studies, that seemed to prove breakfast skippers to have higher mortality. But when you correct the information and take out the smokers who tend to skip breakfast more than non-smokers, then the effect is null. Because smokers tend to die younger.
Is that all the evidence ? Well, that`s about it.
By the way, we didn`t always have breakfast on the menu.
In ancient times, like in Greece and in Rome, eating breakfast was a status symbol for the wealthy, whose timetable was loose anyway, while the working class started the day early and fasting, or with a little nibbling.
The famous English breakfast was a Victorian status symbol as well. While ordinary British workers including children started at the factory at 5 a.m. without even the possibility of dipping some bread in lard or porridge.
This has changed, bread and cheese, eggs and cornflakes with milk are affordable to most of us and now everyone is being told that he must eat breakfast.
But recent research challenges this.
Several studies assigned habitual breakfast skippers to eat breakfast. The most notable finding was they consumed an additional 260 kcal a day and gained weight, because they did not compensate by reducing their intake at subsequent meals but they simply added the breakfast calories on top of their usual daily intake.
Besides, by eating breakfast when you`re not really hungry you are downregulating important physiological mechanisms.
One of the most important things in terms of keeping a normal weight is feeling hungry from times to times. It doesn`t imply to fast a whole day long, or to eat 16/8, but feeling hunger part of the day triggers changes in the hypothalamus, which is part of the brain controlling our basic vegetative functions. It also leads to hormonal changes, especially in hormones secreted by the fat cells, like leptin. And it regulates the composition of the microbiota. And all of these are interconnected in what scientists call the neuroendocrine axis and the brain-gut connection.
Hunger also makes a reset to the energitical expenditure, and moderates the hedonistic pleasure part in eating.
There might also be an emotional part, or even anxious component in our refusal to feel hunger.
For instance, European people who lived through the WW2 food rationing may have developed some kind of compensatory "never feel the hunger again" mechanism, and tried to educate their children that way.
But we have to resist this tendency. Feeling hunger is important no less than eating or drinking in order to stay alive.
So, my advice is that If you feel hungry in the morning, then eat a hearty breakfast before you start your day, that`s fine. But if you don`t feel hungry, then you don`t have to. A good cup of coffee or tea is just OK, and nibble or eat later when you`ll feel the need for it.