[Popular science hotspots] Noisy hot search! Don’t eat breakfast VS don’t eat dinner, which has a greater impact on the body？

The following article comes from China, the author Ruan Guangfeng.

Cop China.

Public science popularization and scientific communication

In the fast-paced modern life, many people often choose to skip a meal because of time constraints or other reasons. Among them, skipping breakfast and skipping dinner are two common phenomena. A few days ago, the topic # Is skipping breakfast more harmful than skipping dinner? # boarded a hot search in Weibo, which triggered a hot discussion among netizens.

So, what kind of influence will such eating habits have on the body? Skipping breakfast VS skipping dinner, which has a greater impact on your health?

Image source: Weibo screenshot

What’s wrong with skipping breakfast?

As the saying goes, a day’s plan lies in the morning. So we all take breakfast very seriously. However, due to the accelerating pace of life, more and more people often can’t eat breakfast, let alone eat breakfast badly.

As the first meal of the day, breakfast is very important for dietary nutrition intake, health status and work or study efficiency. Eating breakfast every day is also a healthy lifestyle advocated by the World Health Organization (WHO). Breakfast takes the longest time from the previous meal and consumes a lot of energy. If you don’t eat breakfast, it may lead to unbalanced nutrition. It can also lead to hunger, reduce brain excitability, slow response and inattention, and affect work and study efficiency.

It is good for health to form the habit of eating breakfast regularly. Many studies have found that eating breakfast regularly has a negative correlation with obesity and cardiovascular diseases. China’s dietary guidelines also point out that a reasonable diet can reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, and eating breakfast regularly is also part of a reasonable diet, so it is very important.

However, many people don’t eat breakfast well enough. According to the Survey Report on Breakfast Diet of China Residents, 35% of Chinese people can’t eat breakfast every day; Even if they can have breakfast, many people don’t eat healthily. There are 55% people who have less than three kinds of food for breakfast every day, and 42% people can’t get it in 10 minutes, so it is difficult to achieve a balanced diet.

What’s wrong with skipping dinner?

Of the three meals a day, we usually think that dinner is the least important.

In fact, if you really skip dinner at all, it will also do harm to your health. The most direct and obvious thing is-hunger, which leads to malnutrition.

After all, the energy and nutrition that our human body needs every day are almost the same. If we don’t eat a certain meal and don’t eat much at other times, it will definitely not be enough. Slowly, it will be exhausted, and hunger will increase sharply, which will affect the quality of sleep and make it difficult for people to fall asleep or sleep lightly.

If you don’t eat dinner simply and rudely, other living habits will remain the same as usual, and malnutrition will occur in the long run. For example, you may be listless, physically exhausted, depressed, and pale … These are all manifestations of malnutrition.

However, some patients with special diseases, such as peptic ulcer, or people who work at special time (such as three shifts and night shift), skipping dinner will have a greater impact on them.

Therefore, from the health point of view, you should also try to arrange your three meals a day regularly, and you can’t have less dinner.

Which is more important, breakfast or dinner?

The field of chrononutrition is exploring this problem.

Temporal nutrition is a new research field in recent years, which studies how factors such as food intake time, diet pattern and eating frequency affect the metabolism, energy balance and health status of the body. Over the years, it has been found that the time to eat breakfast and dinner will have a certain impact on health.

Studies have found that skipping breakfast is related to the increased risk of circulatory diseases and all-cause death in men and the increased risk of all-cause death in women; Habitual skipping breakfast is associated with an increased risk of gastrointestinal cancers, including esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, colorectal cancer, liver cancer, gallbladder cancer and extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma; Skipping breakfast will increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality.

Dinner is also important. For example, some studies have found that eating dinner after 9 o’clock increases the risk of cancer. Eating dinner before 9 o’clock every night can reduce the comprehensive cancer risk by about 25%, and at the same time, compared with going to bed immediately after meals, sleeping after meals for 2 hours or more can reduce the risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer by 20%. Eating only one meal a day is associated with a higher risk of death, while skipping lunch or dinner especially increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.

These studies are still being explored and need further argumentation. However, judging from the current voice in the field of nutrition, it is generally believed that a regular diet is more beneficial to health.

According to the report of American Dietary Guidelines, Americans who eat three meals a day have higher dietary quality than those who eat two meals a day, which is attributed to the relatively large intake of vegetables, green leafy vegetables, fruits, whole grains and dairy products.

The American Heart Association (AHA) summarized the effects of specific dietary patterns on the health markers of cardiac metabolism, including obesity, blood lipid level, insulin resistance and blood pressure. The results showed that skipping breakfast, intermittent fasting, eating frequency (daily eating times) and eating time were the dietary patterns that affected the health markers of cardiac metabolism. Irregular eating patterns are not conducive to maintaining good cardiac metabolic health.

Therefore, it is suggested that people should consciously formulate a good eating pattern, whether it is breakfast or dinner, and develop a regular eating habit of three meals.

Finally, as a staff member in the field of food and nutrition, I would like to give you some suggestions:

1. Give yourself some time: Please give yourself some time for breakfast or dinner. Even if you simply eat a bowl of porridge, an egg, or a piece of bread and a glass of milk, you can provide your body with the energy and nutrition you need.

2. Gradually improve the level of nutrition: Many people are really busy and don’t have much time to prepare breakfast or dinner, but they can start slowly and try their best to diversify their food and promote a balanced nutrition. Dietary guidelines suggest that we eat 12 kinds of food every day and 25 kinds of food every week. Therefore, there should not be too few kinds of food every day. It is suggested that we should try our best to have high-quality protein such as vegetables, fruit staple food and meat, instead of all big fish and big meat.

3. Pay attention to your body’s feelings: When you feel hungry or uncomfortable, don’t ignore it. This is a signal from your body that you need to supplement energy and nutrition. Please respect your body’s feelings and provide it with the food it needs in time.

4. Keep a positive attitude: the change of eating habits is not achieved overnight, it takes time and persistence. In this process, please keep a positive attitude and patience, and believe that your efforts will bring good health and a better life.

references

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[2] Chrononutrition: Meal time is very important for your health |NHLBI, National Institutes of Health (nih.gov)

[3] Yokoyama Y, Onishi K, Hosoda T, Amano H, Otani S, Kurozawa Y, Tamakoshi A. Skipping Breakfast and Risk of Mortality from Cancer, Circulatory Diseases and All Causes: Findings from the Japan Collaborative Cohort Study. Yonago Acta Med. 2016 Mar; 59(1):55-60. Epub 2016 Apr 1. Erratum in: Yonago Acta Med. 2019 Dec 28; 62(4):308. PMID: 27046951; PMCID: PMC4816749.

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[7] DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2022.08.11

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Source | Popular Science China

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Original title: "[Popular science hotspots] noisy hot search! Don’t eat breakfast VS don’t eat dinner, which has a greater impact on the body? 》

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