As the spring holidays fast approach, we begin to think again about eating as a family. There’s growing evidence that family meals play an important role in the health and well being of adolescent girls, not to mention in blunting eating disorders. But there may be a troubling fly in this family-style soup.

There’s long been a consensus that what you eat influences how you sleep. But can how you sleep dictate how you eat?

The answer is yes. At least at the extreme.

They skip it because they want to lose weight. Breakfast, that is.

In a study published this month in Pediatrics, Dianne Neumark-Sztainer’s group at the University of Minnesota reported that adolescents who regularly skip breakfast end up heavier than their counterparts, who spoon their cereal and nibble their toast regularly. Because the skippers tended to be trying to --or thinking about trying to -- lose weight, the authors concluded that breakfast-skipping may be a misguided attempt at weight loss.