Children who frequently miss breakfast have lower life satisfaction than those who regularly eat a morning meal, according to a study of nearly 150,000 young people across the world
https://www.aru.ac.uk/news/children-who-miss-breakfast-are-less-happy-in-life
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>The research, published in the BMC Nutrition Journal, was led by Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and Universidad de las Americas, and shows a nearly linear relationship between higher frequency of eating breakfast and greater life satisfaction in children and adolescents aged between 10 and 17 years old across 42 countries including Britain.
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>The highest life satisfaction score was identified in participants who had breakfast daily, whereas the lowest life satisfaction score was observed in children who never had breakfast.
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>Among the 42 countries studies, children who ate breakfast every day in Portugal had the highest levels of life satisfaction. In contrast, the lowest life satisfaction scores were found in children from Romania who never ate breakfast, indicating potential socio-economic factors also influencing the results.
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>Amongst children who ate breakfast every day, children in England had the fifth lowest mean life satisfaction scores, behind only Romania, Hungary, Germany and Austria.
Paper: Is[the frequency of breakfast consumption associated with life satisfaction in children and adolescents? A cross-sectional study with 154,151 participants from 42 countries](https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-024-00979-5)
Cutting to the summary:
>Results did show some inconsistencies between countries, which might be influenced by diverse cultures and lifestyles and socio-economic factors. However despite this, our results show that in all the countries examined, reported life satisfaction is overall higher in those who eat breakfast daily than in those who never eat breakfast.”
The paper outlines a lot of different causes but doesn’t seem to acknowledge the ceremony of it.
Supported by science via [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4325878/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4325878/),
>This systematic review provides further support that frequent family meals should be endorsed. All health care practitioners should educate families on the benefits of having regular meals together as a family.
and with anecdotal additional information in our house and as primary cook, I’ve made it a point to eat supper with the family, including our visiting adult children who often come home for a few days. All of our kids are older and out of school, and they sometimes eat breakfast and lunch with the rest of us at the same time or they might not.
But there’s a fairly ironclad rule in our house that supper is with the family and at the table, no electronics unless a phone call comes in from certain numbers that might indicate something important and timely.
And I think it helps our family dynamic a lot. Of course there are going to be exceptions, but breakfast isn’t usually just stuff-a-pop-tart-in-your-mouth-as-you-run-for-the-bus for most families with school age kids. It certainly wasn’t for ours at the time..
My point is i*t’s a stable element of family life, performed with family. For kids, that family reassurance ceremony’s gotta be important.* And the article approaches mentioning this from a breakfast context, but in my mind undervalues and slightly misses it, with this nod.
>A regular routine that includes breakfast can also bring structure and a positive tone to the rest of the day.
Growing up my parents would be at work before I left for school. The only thing to eat when I got to school was cereal and I am lactose intolerant. I don’t think I was missing out on breakfast made my life less satisfied.
I think this has less to do with breakfast and more to do with other factors sleep cycle. Kids whose natural sleep rhythm forces them to sleep to the last minute and skip breakfast and kids whose rough home life doesn’t make breakfast available are in worse positions than kids who naturally wake up early and have a stable environment where breakfast is provided
“Poor life conditions make people unhappy” – science, 2024.
“Children who are hungry might feel worse than children who are not”
Who the fluff pays for this stuff and waste resources
I never ate breakfast as a kid
Yhia is why i dislike and can’t take these social studies seriously. They simplify a topic to a singular parameter and make general conclusions from that singular parameter, without context of other factors.
Probably not the breakfast that matters but more like having parents that are involved and care enough to make them food every morning
150,000 from across the globe as in out of billions of children? Doesn’t that seem like a super small sample?
I purposely miss breakfast because if I ate cereal or anything in the morning I would be hungry in a hour… So I would skip breakfast not be hungry. I would just eat lunch and dinner. Now I only eat an occasional lunch and I eat dinner. But I’m pretty satisfied with my life.
This is moreso the financial situation than breakfast itself. If a child can’t afford to have breakfast, then they most likely are in a family with rough financials.
Just a guess, but if you’re missing breakfast because of things like lack of food or finances, then I suspect you are missing out on a lot of other things that would lead to less satisfaction.
I think that kids raised in a house where the parents care enough to plan a breakfast have better outcomes.
This tells us nothing about the effect of breakfast on life satisfaction
Most breakfasts are high in sugar.