Breakfast has always been referred to as the most important meal of the day! The name itself is self-explanatory, “Breaking the fast.” After the last meal from the previous day, we should break the night-long fast first thing in the morning.
But why? Just because people claim it to be important? What is the exact science behind it? And why skipping breakfast is not right?
Now is the instance, of building up our immunity as a safety measure for the pandemic outbreak. Does this so-called “Very Important Meal” have any direct or indirect role play in improving the body’s immune response? So think again, skipping breakfast is okay?
Breakfast Eaters Consume Less Sugar
According to a study by Michel Gibney, Susan Barr, et.al., on Breakfast in Human Nutrition: The International Breakfast Research Initiative, diet quality was assessed for breakfast consumers and skippers. In which they revealed that snacks, sweets, beverages (non-alcoholic, non-dairy), and mixed dishes were higher in contribution to daily calories among skippers compared to consumers. Grains and milk contributed more to calories among breakfast consumers. Breakfast eaters consumed lower overall daily levels of added sugar and higher levels of fiber, folate, iron, vitamin C, vitamin A, and calcium.
The Healthy Eating Index was higher among breakfast consumers compared to non- consumers. The data, illustrative of a large literature on the subject, show the importance of breakfast intake in shaping overall nutrient intake.
This certainly gave us an idea about how consuming breakfast keeps our nutrient stores intact, thereby creating a perfect balance of required nutrients and inhibiting the consumption of unwanted nutrients in the form of snacks, sweets, beverages, and so on!!
What else can boost or keep your immune system strengthened other than perfectly balanced essential nutrient intake?
Breakfast Induces Weight Loss
Consuming breakfast can not only benefit the immune system by shaping overall nutrient intake, but also by reducing or inducing weight loss, which skipping breakfast won’t do!
At present, there are not many pieces of evidence stating the direct effect of breakfast and immunity, but one will be able to find studies that have stated improved nutritional status by keeping body weight under check.
According to research published by Alessa Naz, Nora mirza, et.al., in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, there can be several risks by skipping breakfast. The study also states that there is an increased number of inflammatory cells, leukocytes, on the days when one skips diet. Nevertheless, the risk of obesity, and other metabolic complications like, heart ailments, diabetes, are shown to be greater in people who skip breakfast.
It’s now well known, that obesity decreases immunity, which increases the risk of bacterial and viral infections.
This might put our breakfast skippers in a thought, that they might want to rethink about their habit, especially in this period of pandemic!!
Take Away Message
The morning breakfast needs to be the biggest meal of the day, which will suffice not only our nutrient requirements but also our hunger until lunch! It can be as simple as Dosa Sambar, westernized as bread with beans and a glass of juice/smoothie/milk loaded with nuts, or as common as roti-sabzi.
There are more than thousands of breakfast recipes flooding over the internet. The only thing we need to do is prepare and start eating! These are the small things that will help us get fit, and something, if skipped, will gradually deprive us of reaching that fit version of us, which is definitely unaffordable at this stage! Hence, skipping it might not seem like a good option. So are you still thinking of skipping breakfast?
Very Informative 👍🏼
Very informative 👍🏼