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Health: true or false?
LifestyleHealth & Wellness

Is breakfast really the most important meal? Scientists sort fact from myth

Whether or not you should eat breakfast depends on how active you will be later, lead researcher in comprehensive UK study says. If you aren’t hungry and you’ll be sedentary all day, there may be no need to eat anything

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Why you can trust SCMP
Very few Hongkongers skip breakfast according to a recent study.
Kate Whitehead

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day – really?

Maybe not as important as people say, according to the latest results from a three-year project by researchers in Britain. The Bath Breakfast Project is being heralded as offering the most comprehensive insights into breakfast eating and its impact on the body.

“I was surprised by how little we know about breakfast. More than any other area of nutrition, the difference between what everyone thinks we know and what we actually know is vast,” says lead researcher Dr James Betts at the University of Bath who last year was awarded the Cuthbertson Medal by the Nutrition Society for his work.

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Eating breakfast results in more physical activity and reduced food intake later.
Eating breakfast results in more physical activity and reduced food intake later.
Hongkongers love their morning meal, according to statistics from the Centre for Health Protection. In a survey of 4,253 adults in April 2015, only 4 per cent of respondents had skipped breakfast in the 30 days prior to being polled. This bodes well for Hongkongers’ health, based on the project’s most recent headline finding.
James Betts, University of Bath.
James Betts, University of Bath.
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Betts says we need to personalise our nutrition, but adds that this is different from the recent trend of “bespoke meal plans”. By “personalised”, he means that what you eat is dependent on what you do during your day.

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