“Now that we know the general recommendation of ‘eat breakfast every day’ has no differential impact on weight loss, we can move forward with studying other techniques for improved effectiveness,” Dhurandhar said. “We should try to understand why eating or skipping breakfast did not influence weight loss, despite evidence that breakfast may influence appetite and metabolism.”
To their credit, the researchers do point out several limitations to the study. For one, focusing on weight loss as the final outcome ignores more nuanced measures like body fat or metabolism, to say nothing of appetite. Also, though 16 weeks is longer than most studies like it, there’s still the possibility that trends would emerge from an even longer study. Finally, since there was no measure of the type of foods breakfast eaters consumed, there’s no telling what (if any) foods might be more helpful than others.
Still, if nothing else, the researchers see the study as a perfect example of why it pays to be skeptical.