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The study has a pretty small sample size, but it seems well designed and matches what you'd expect.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> therefore 19 participants completed the study (2 females and 17 males) and their data are presented throughout Who in their own mind decided that this is a "study" worth publishing?
You're reading the study wrong. You read We saw this effect, so it's real. In actuality it is We saw this effect in a small study, so it's worth doing a larger study. It's worth publishing because it's evidence and motivation to do further studying. And if you're asking "Why not start large?" the answer is obvious: money.
There are trade offs in either case and some types of research where one is more suitable than the other. But the best case is a combination of the two, and it's exceedingly rare.
Maybe there are other options but this seems to be the polar nature of these studies from what I've seen.
The abstract begins, "Growing evidence supports early eating to control appetite and energy balance". What does that mean? My unskilled reading of it is that there is recent evidence that eating breakfast helps with weight loss. But I'm confused because there was a 2019 meta-analysis that found that eating breakfast does NOT help with weight loss. https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l42
The problem there might be what people are eating for breakfast.
How many of these studies used buttered eggs and potato as the sole breakfast?
"big meal alters appetite" is a hell of a conclusion. Definitely going to need to study that one.
19 participants.
Interesting but they had no control.
They used a crossover design, so each subject served as their own control. Not a bad choice for trials like this as you gain a lot of statistical power with fewer participants than a parallel-arm, non-crossover design.
If they used crossover design they should have all participants go through a second trial period where they consume the same diet but with light breakfast and more caloric lunch and dinner. Then they could actually have more insight on the main thesis of their study, i.e. whether bug breakfast alters appetite.