Skipping Breakfast and Risk of Mortality

conversationstarters
science
fasting
(Teresa (turtle)) #1

I have seen a couple of YouTube interview with Dr. Valter Longo regarding this topic, what do you all think?

(*Rusty* Instagram: @Rustyk61) #2

I am suspicious of anyone that tries to tell me I have to eat, even if I’m not hungry. JMO

(Michelle) #3

Yes, I heard that High Intensity Health podcast where Mike had Valter Longo on there. He said that 16 hour fasts cause greater risk of gall bladder stones. But, he couldn’t say why (the mechanics of how that happened with longer fasts). Just kept saying that’s what the studies showed.

(KCKO, KCFO) #4

Well there are several countries (30)with life expectancy longer than the USA’s. And most of them do not eat breakfast daily. The only European country I went to that did and made getting it easy was the UK.

(Brian) #5

I think it matters WHY people are not eating breakfast. Is it because they’ve binged on pizza and beer until 3:00am and don’t bother getting up until lunch time? Is it because they are poor and really do not have enough food to eat so they wait until supper time to eat so they can go to bed with something in their stomach? Is it because they’ve chosen to do intermittent fasting as a way to improve their health?

Those are all examples of “skipping breakfast” but quite different in the reasons for it. I would suspect the outcomes of mortality could be significantly different, too.

It kinda sounds like one of those things where we try to figure out how likely we are to have a house fire by the number and placement of fire departments close to certain places. There is just a whole lot more to it.

I did find the life expectancy charts interesting, though. It’s good to be a woman in France or a man in Iceland.

(KCKO, KCFO) #6

I just find it interesting my mother ate AWFUL carbage her whole life. Stress and worry is all she ever did in large amounts, and still beat the odds by several years. Her idea of the perfect meal was Dr. Pepper with a white bread sandwich of balogna with Miracle Whip, a huge pile of fried potatoes, followed by a couple of Milky Ways. And that was one of her healthier meals, Oh, wait maybe the organs and other bits of waste meats helped???

(Madge Boldt) #7

Limitations of the study seemed very… limiting! Example: “The present study has some limitations. The baseline survey was conducted in 1988 to 1990 and eating habits were queried only once.”

How many people have kept the same dietary habits for that long? Seems a yearly re-check of breakfast would have been in order.

They also admitted to not examining nutrients. Self-reporting surveys aren’t exactly rock solid for accuracy.

And then there is the conclusion:

“In conclusion, this study showed that skipping breakfast is associated with a risk of mortality from circulatory diseases and all causes among men and all causes mortality among women. In addition, skipping breakfast was found to be related to unhealthy lifestyle habits such as current smoker, physical activity less than 3 h per a week, walking duration less than 60 min per a day, low levels of total energy intake, eating dinner at irregular time and snacking every day.”

Skipping breakfast was related to all those other “unhealthy” lifestyles, and one of those was smoking. Couldn’t it then be the smoking that killed the participant, rather than skipping breakfast?

(Sophie) #8

I keep trying to remember when this crap about “Breakfast: The Most Important Meal Of The Day” bullshit became in vogue, and the best I can recall was early 80’s? And no, I haven’t googled it, it’s just from memory. Maybe it was later like the early 90’s. Whatever, I believe it was associated with cereal commercials. But hell, I could be wrong. I’m of an age that memory fails me so frequently now. :roll_eyes:

(Brian) #9

Ever since I was a kid, I pretty much refused to eat cereal. I often referred to it as “cereal box” because I thought the box was probably about as tasty (and nutritious) as what was inside of it.

Maybe my kid instincts weren’t so far after all.

I still despise the stuff, for different reasons.

(TJ Borden) #10

I still think breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It also often happens to be my only meal in the day, and I tend to not eat it until late afternoon.

(Dan Dan) #11

I agree :grin:

My ‘Breakfast’ is at 8pm :bacon:

#12

Way earlier than that? I was always made to feel guilty for never having breakfast and I was born in the early 60s. I think starting in the 50s 3 square meals was the norm

#13

Lived on the stuff when I was a kid loved it and not because of the commercials, I loved the sugar and the carbs. Even then I would have corn flakes as dinner with plenty of extra sugar