Breakfast eaters tend to have better diets overall, consuming more fruit, vegetables, milk, and whole grains than non-breakfast eaters.
And because the time between dinner and the next morning’s meal is the longest your body goes without food, breakfast has an effect on you that’s different from any other meal. Eating within 2 hours of waking can make a difference in the way you metabolize glucose, or blood sugar, all day. Your glucose level rises every time you eat, and your pancreas produces insulin to shuttle the glucose into your cells, where it’s used for energy. Research is finding that keeping glucose and insulin in the right balance has important effects on metabolism and health.
“After a healthy breakfast your blood sugar increases a little bit, but it will take a while for your body to absorb it,” says Eric Rimm, Sc.D., a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. “So you might not be hungry for lunch for 5 hours.”
If you don’t bother with breakfast, though, the prolonged fasting might lead to a bigger than normal boost in “hunger hormones” such as ghrelin, encouraging you to overeat at your next meal and leading to spikes and dips in glucose. “Over time, if your pancreas is constantly producing insulin to compensate for high levels of glucose, it will burn out and you’ll develop diabetes,” Rimm says.
What you eat is important, of course. If your idea of breakfast is a doughnut and a cup of coffee, or sugary cereal and a glass of fruit juice, you’re setting the stage for metabolic havoc. Fortunately, breakfast can be flavorful as well as healthy. There are plenty of traditional breakfast foods that taste great and are good for you. Our food-testing team took a close look at 33 cereals and 27 Greek yogurts—two of the most popular breakfast items—to help you pick the most nutritious and best-tasting options.