NEW HAVEN, Conn (WTNH) – Your mom always said breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Now, science is backing her up. A study done at Yale showed middle school students who ate breakfast at school are less likely to become overweight or obese than those who don't. That's even if the student had already eaten breakfast at home.
The study involved 584 middle school students from 12 schools in an urban school district where breakfast and lunch are provided to all students at no cost. Researchers tracked the students' breakfast-eating locations and patterns, and their weight over a two-year period from 5th grade in 2011-2012 to 7th grade in 2013-2014.
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The findings, published Thursday in the journal Pediatric Obesity, bring new evidence to the ongoing debate over policy efforts to increase daily school breakfast consumption. Previous research has shown that eating breakfast is associated with improved academic performance, better health, and healthy body weight for students. But there have been concerns that a second breakfast at school following breakfast at home could increase the risk of unhealthy weight gain.