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.
While the news is not shocking, there is a surprise in a gender tidbit buried in the results. The authors followed a group of 2216 students over the course of 5 years (from age 15 to 20, on average). When the students were younger, girls more often skipped breakfast than boys. Over time, however, the boys began to eat fewer breakfasts until, at the older age, males matched females in the frequency of their meal-skipping.
The study begs a provocative question: As they navigate through the prime of adolescence, are boys falling down the same dieting hole as girls? Or are both groups (which, by the way, are skipping breakfasts more frequently as they grow up) simply getting caught up in the frenzy of other stuff, i.e. sports, drama, academic stresses that make it harder to get up early and eat something before heading to school?
The study suggests the former – because the boys who ate the fewest breakfasts were less active and heavier than the breakfast eaters. The authors concluded that we ought to pay more attention to breakfast habits in our future obesity prevention efforts.
I think the issue is much larger. Inside the uneaten bowls of Raisin Bran, eating disorders are swirling. Teens are getting bad ideas about how to lose weight. That, in part, stems from the value adolescents place on weight in how they think of themselves. And yet, most teens don't seem to get the importance of fiber and complex carbohydrates (an utter no-no in today’s Adkins-crazed society) in healthy development--particularly, as they roll out of bed and start off their crazy days. As an add-on, boys are no longer excluded from the insanity. In fact, 5-15 percent of anorexia and bulimia cases and at least 35 percent of binge eating disorder cases occur in males.
The message here is not just to think about breakfast as a tool for obesity prevention. But also about how our growing teens, both males and females, are gradually formulating unhealthy perceptions and habits related to eating. Since those can be the gateway to the eating disorders hole, let’s think more broadly than just how to keep teens from getting fat.