Research paper
Sievert K, Hussain SM, Page MJ, Wang Y, Hughes HJ, Malek M, Cicuttini FM. Effect of breakfast on weight and energy intake: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BMJ. 2019;364:l42. doi:10.1136/bmj.l42. PMID: 30700403.
Why we cite it
Systematic review and meta-analysis of 13 RCTs examining the effect of breakfast on body weight and energy intake. It finds that the ubiquitous advice to “eat breakfast to lose weight” is not supported by randomised evidence, and that adding breakfast increases total daily calorie intake by ~260 kcal/day without producing weight loss.
The authors judge their own evidence low: ”We consider the quality of the body of evidence to be low for several reasons.” Their stated reasons: all 13 trials at high or unclear risk of bias in at least one domain; only short-term follow-up; substantial heterogeneity in the energy-intake results (I² = 80%); varying populations; durations ranging from 24 hours to 16 weeks; and missing paired analyses in crossover trials requiring imputation.
Their own conclusion is a caution, not a demonstration: ”Caution is needed when recommending breakfast for weight loss in adults, as it could have the opposite effect.”
Known defects on this page:
- Most reference pages are missing their About the authors section Most of our reference pages leave out the section about who wrote the paper