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There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast

nytimes.com

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Re: There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast

#91

Post by arcticbull »

stonemetal wrote: post #37
gravypod wrote: post #7

Isn't the first meal that you eat in the day your "breakfast?" Because wouldn't that be the time you "break" your "fast".

No, just because breakfast is a compound word doesn't mean it must exactly match the two words it is composed of. Spearmint isn't mint leaves tied to a spear, Carhop doesn't involve jumping in any way, and understand doesn't involve standing anywhere let alone under anything.

Some compound words do, however, like firetruck. It's a truck. For fire. Breakfast falls into that category.

Re: There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast

#92

Post by mikeash »

IIlllIllIIIIlII wrote: post #68
mikeash wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course. I don't disagree with that at all. I'm just saying that "breakfast is good for you" is not disproven merely by showing that it's not always good for you.

my original thoughts were wrong. it makes more sense to use a cost/benefit function (ala economics) rather than a logical argument

Gotcha. I think that's what I'm trying to say as well.

Re: There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast

#93

Post by collyw »

pessimizer wrote: post #40
douche wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bacon and eggs is still better than a sugar-blasted bowl of breakfast cereal, which it seems we are thankfully getting away from as the default breakfast.

Of course that's not what they taught us in school, which was that we were supposed to have a pile of carbs with more carbs sprinkled on top and wash it down with carb juice and milk. Bacon and eggs would kill you by clogging your heart with pan drippings.

Is there any scientific evidence that carbs are bad? It seems to be true on the internet, but I would prefer to see some proper peer reviewed studies.

Re: There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast

#94

Post by duaneb »

mmastrac wrote: post #5

This reads like "I don't eat breakfast, so here's the reasons why I'm right." Studies that support his conclusion, while flawed, are probably right. Studies that oppose it are obviously tainted by various problems. The fact that research shows that breakfast is actually beneficial for children is hand-waved away because 'reasons'. This is honestly just a low-quality, cherry-picked opinion piece by someone who really…

I think this is more of a refutation of "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day", not of the meal entirely.

Re: There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast

#95

Post by ethbro »

mmastrac wrote: post #69
coldtea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This reads like "I don't eat breakfast, so here's the reasons why I'm right." Actually he gives very reasoned arguments and comments on meta-studies showing that he is right -- not that breakfast is bad, but in that it doesn't make any difference, and if it does nobody has clearly shown it. (a) . In a paper published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2013, researchers reviewed the literature on the e…

(a), (b), (d), and (e) are where he's argued that support for "breakfast is good" is methodologically weak, but then he goes and brings out (c) as an argument for his conclusion, while also being methodologically weak at the same time. You've also neglected to mention (f), where the author discusses studies that show that breakfast is beneficial to children and then handwaves both of them away: > What about the argum…

The quote between your two selected lines

> One of the reasons that breakfast seems to improve children’s learning and progress is that, unfortunately, too many don’t get enough to eat. [...] It’s not hard to imagine that children who are hungry will do better if they are nourished.

Seems a pretty valid point as opposed to handwaving. Nutrition research in general has a pretty studious history of ignoring results in an attempt to support pre-existing conclusions.

For support of last statement, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-ration (side note: military nutrition has a long and interesting involvement with civilian nutrition guidelines)

Re: There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast

#96

Post by ethbro »

forgetsusername wrote: post #60
bgilroy26 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The truth is probably people have different metabolisms and if you are hungry in the morning you should eat and if you are not you shouldn't. Bodies don't always cooperate, if you are going to exercise strenuously in a given day you had better eat some kind of breakfast whether your body feels like it or not. Breakfast is always going to be the opportunity to eat when you have more of the day ahead of you. That's tr…

> if you are going to exercise strenuously in a given day you had better eat some kind of breakfast whether your body feels like it or not Or what? As someone who has undertaken week long fasts while participating in competitive sports with no discernible performance difference, I'm skeptical. Your body doesn't "run out of fuel" because you haven't eaten for 12 hours. Everyone is different. These rules of thumb, incl…

Well, it runs out of certain kinds of fuel. But luckily, evolution gifted us with multiple Plan B's to prevent silly malnourished mammals from keeling over the first time they missed a meal!

Re: There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast

#97

Post by jschwartzi »

mmastrac wrote: post #69
coldtea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This reads like "I don't eat breakfast, so here's the reasons why I'm right." Actually he gives very reasoned arguments and comments on meta-studies showing that he is right -- not that breakfast is bad, but in that it doesn't make any difference, and if it does nobody has clearly shown it. (a) . In a paper published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2013, researchers reviewed the literature on the e…

(a), (b), (d), and (e) are where he's argued that support for "breakfast is good" is methodologically weak, but then he goes and brings out (c) as an argument for his conclusion, while also being methodologically weak at the same time. You've also neglected to mention (f), where the author discusses studies that show that breakfast is beneficial to children and then handwaves both of them away: > What about the argum…

In those studies, they've probably failed to control for children who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch, which is a good proxy for children who don't get enough to eat for lunch. I suspect the correlation would go away if that were controlled for.

Re: There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast

#98

Post by ethbro »

IIlllIllIIIIlII wrote: post #68
mikeash wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course. I don't disagree with that at all. I'm just saying that "breakfast is good for you" is not disproven merely by showing that it's not always good for you.

my original thoughts were wrong. it makes more sense to use a cost/benefit function (ala economics) rather than a logical argument

Feel free to leave original comments up. No shame in knowledge or thoughts!

Re: There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast

#99

Post by PeterisP »

everfree wrote: post #71
coldtea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This reads like "I don't eat breakfast, so here's the reasons why I'm right." Actually he gives very reasoned arguments and comments on meta-studies showing that he is right -- not that breakfast is bad, but in that it doesn't make any difference, and if it does nobody has clearly shown it. (a) . In a paper published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2013, researchers reviewed the literature on the e…

So it sounds like a more apt name for the article would be "There is no conclusive evidence for or against whether breakfast is magical".

Once you have carefully looked in the obvious places, contrary to the proverb, absence of evidence is evidence of absence - not very strong evidence, but still.

With the attention paid to this topic, if no causal relationship has been found, then it does imply (though not conclusively) that in most circumstances breakfast does not have any strong, meaningful beneficial (or magical) effect.

Re: There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast

#100

Post by ethbro »

maxerickson wrote: post #34
seanwilson wrote: post #9

It seems pretty clear our understanding of diet is still in its infancy and news sites need to stop reporting every small piece of diet evidence as advice people should follow. Journalists in general need to do a much better job of explaining how robust new evidence is. I love this website for health science news and wish there were more like it: http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx In each article they break…

I'd say it is at least a ways into adolescence. Understanding vitamins and trace minerals was a pretty big step forward.

The problem is that I imagine getting any farther is extremely difficult, and I wouldn't be surprised if future breakthroughs come from the computational biology / geno/proteomics crowd instead.

"How does changing the raw materials going into this mind-bogglingly complex collection of biochemical processes we call a body affect the whole?" is a rather difficult question to answer.

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