Should I eat breakfast?

"Skipping breakfast could increase risk of heart attacks," reported The Telegraph earlier this month. It smells fishy, and that's not just the early morning kippers. Researchers recruited 4,082 employees aged 40 to 54 from the headquarters of Santander Bank in Madrid, who filled out a detailed computerised questionnaire about what and when they ate and drank over 15 days. Breakfast was arbitrarily defined as eating before 10am. The researchers then looked at their major arteries with ultrasound to see if they showed signs of fatty tissue build-up.

Only three per cent of the participants skipped breakfast, and they were more likely to have atherosclerosis. They were also more likely to be male, be smokers, be trying to lose weight and have a more unhealthy diet overall. The researchers tried to adjust for these variables and felt the link between no breakfast and furred arteries was legitimate.

However, they assessed people's diets and artery health at the same point in time, and fatty deposits build up gradually in your arteries. What really matters is what you eat over 15 years, not 15 days. Some people who skip breakfast overcompensate with a massive lunch, others party all night and are seldom conscious before 10am. If you do this every day, your arteries may well clog up more quickly. Or it could simply be that employees of the headquarters of Santander have better things to do with their time than fill in detailed food diaries, and those who appeared to be skipping breakfast were merely skipping answers.