Have you ever stopped to question that well-worn dictum, “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”? I for one have spent many a day of my life breakfastless. Does this mean I’ve regularly risked my health? Popular opinion might argue yes. Aaron E. Carroll writing recently in the New York Times says absolutely not.

Carroll, a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, argues that common myths around the importance of breakfast stem from “misinterpreted research and biased studies.” He cites a 2013 paper published in the Journal of Circulation that offered evidence tying skipped breakfasts to coronary heart disease and another to obesity. “But, like almost all studies of breakfast,” notes Carroll, “this is an association, not causation.”

Carroll goes on to illustrate the numerous confirmation biases inherent in research that supports this commonly held belief. Prime among these tactics, writes Carroll, are “causal language” and improper citation of results that convince people “skipping breakfast is bad.”

As for the rationale behind this manipulative “observational research”? Carroll writes:

Many of the studies are funded by the food industry, which has a clear bias. Kellogg funded a highly cited article that found that cereal for breakfast is associated with being thinner. The Quaker Oats Center of Excellence (part of PepsiCo) financed a trial that showed that eating oatmeal or frosted cornflakes reduces weight and cholesterol (if you eat it in a highly controlled setting each weekday for four weeks).

Like so many issues tied to corporate-interest research, the problem comes down to a lack of “randomized controlled trials.” That’s not to say they don’t exist. But as Carroll points out, even those that draw no definitive connection between breakfast and the state of one’s health suffer from methodological weakness.

In the end, like most things that concern your health, a bit of common sense and moderation goes a long way. Eat a stack of pancakes one day, have a cup of coffee another. Either way, you’re likely to survive.

Writing for AlterNet in an essay on the corporate breakfast myth, Anneli Rufus reported: