Breakfast skipping and cognitive and emotional engagement at school: A cross-sectional population level study

Objective: Research on the consequences of breakfast skipping among students tends to focus on academic outcomes, rather than student wellbeing or engagement at school. This study investigated the association between breakfast skipping and cognitive and emotional aspects of school engagement. Design: Cross-sectional study using data from a population level survey of children and adolescents’ wellbeing and engagement at school. Linear regression with adjustment for confounders was used to estimate the effect of breakfast skipping on school engagement. Setting: Government schools (i.e. public schools) in South Australia. Participants: The participants were students, Grades 4 to 12, who completed the Wellbeing and Engagement Collection in 2019. The analysis sample included 61,825 students. Results: 9.6% of students reported always skipping breakfast, with 35.4% sometimes skipping, and 55.0% never skipping. In the adjusted linear regression models, children and adolescents who always skipped breakfast reported lower levels of cognitive engagement (β = −0.26 (95% CI −0.29, −0.25)), engagement with teachers (β = −0.17 (95% CI −0.18, −0.15)), and school climate (β = −0.17 (95% CI −0.19, −0.15)), compared to those who never skipped breakfast, after controlling for age, gender, health, sleep, sadness and worries, parental education, socioeconomic status, and geographical remoteness. Conclusion: Consistent with our hypothesis, skipping breakfast was associated with lower cognitive and emotional engagement, which could be due to mechanisms such as short-term energy supply and long term health impacts. Therefore, decreasing the prevalence of breakfast skipping could have a positive impact on school engagement.

Associations of Emotional Behavior with Nutritional Status and Lifestyle Habits among Schoolchildren Aged 5–10 Years in Sri Lanka

We aimed to examine the relationships of lifestyle habits and nutritional status with emotional behavior among schoolchildren in Sri Lanka. Five hundred and eight schoolchildren (195 boys and 313 girls) aged 5–10 years were included. Emotional and behavioral problems were assessed using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Nutritional status was used for body mass index-for-age z-score. Breakfast consumption, daily moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA), wake-up time, and bedtime were considered lifestyle habits. The mean total difficulties score ± standard deviation was 12.0 ± 5.3, and the mean prosocial behavior score was 7.4 ± 1.9. In total, 89.2% children ate breakfast, and 41.3% engaged in at least 60 min of MVPA per day. After adjustment for confounding factors, multiple logistic regression analyses showed that breakfast skipping was associated with high scores on conduct problems (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 2.95, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.50 to 5.77, p < 0.01) and that late bedtime was related to low prosocial behavior scores (aOR = 2.43, 95% CI: 1.17 to 5.03, p < 0.05). Our findings suggest that promoting regular lifestyle habits helps reduce psychological difficulties in schoolchildren. However, further research, including longitudinal studies, are required to identify the mechanism underlying this relationship.

Breakfast Skipping, Weight, Cardiometabolic Risk, and Nutrition Quality in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled and Intervention Longitudinal Trials

Breakfast skipping increases with age, and an association with a high risk of being overweight (OW) and of obesity (OB), cardiometabolic risk, and unhealthy diet regimen has been demonstrated in observational studies with children and adults. Short-term intervention trials in adults reported conflicting results. The purpose of this systematic review was to summarize the association of breakfast skipping with body weight, metabolic features, and nutrition quality in the groups of young people that underwent randomized controlled (RCT) or intervention longitudinal trials lasting more than two months. We searched relevant databases (2000–2021) and identified 584 articles, of which 16 were suitable for inclusion. Overall, 50,066 children and adolescents were included. No studies analyzed cardiometabolic features. Interventions were efficacious in reducing breakfast skipping prevalence when multi-level approaches were used. Two longitudinal studies reported a high prevalence of OW/OB in breakfast skippers, whereas RCTs had negligible effects. Ten studies reported a lower-quality dietary intake in breakfast skippers. This review provides insight into the fact that breakfast skipping is a modifiable marker of the risk of OW/OB and unhealthy nutritional habits in children and adolescents. Further long-term multi-level intervention studies are needed to investigate the relationship between breakfast, nutrition quality, chronotypes, and cardiometabolic risk in youths.

Association between Chronotype and Type 2 Diabetes: A Literature Review

Chronotype is an individual attribute of a person regarding circadian rhythm. Past literature denotes that the evening chronotype individuals are more prone to obesity, sleep problems, unhealthy diet and lifestyles. This review investigates original research studies on association between chronotype and diabetes. Total 28 articles were reviewed which were published in four research databases. Evening or later chronotype was associated with diabetes and poor glycemic control. Dietary practices like breakfast skipping, percentage of calories consumed at night to total daily calories were found to partially mediate the association. There is need to study how several risk factors of diabetes and the circadian disruptors influence this association. The abstracts of the shortlisted articles were further studied and relevant articles were shortlisted. Finally, total 28 articles were selected for the review. Articles published in English language only were included. The decision to include or exclude a study; was taken by agreement of all authors.

Association between Irregular Meal Timing and the Mental Health of Japanese Workers

Breakfast skipping and nighttime snacking have been identified as risk factors for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. However, the effects of irregularity of meal timing on health and daily quality of life are still unclear. In this study, a web-based self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted involving 4490 workers (73.3% males; average age = 47.4 ± 0.1 years) in Japan to investigate the association between meal habits, health, and social relationships. This study identified that irregular meal timing was correlated with higher neuroticism (one of the Big Five personality traits), lower physical activity levels, and higher productivity loss. Irregular meal timing was also associated with a higher incidence of sleep problems and lower subjective health conditions. Among health outcomes, a high correlation of irregular meal timing with mental health factors was observed. This study showed that irregularity of meal timing can be explained by unbalanced diets, frequent breakfast skipping, increased snacking frequency, and insufficient latency from the last meal to sleep onset. Finally, logistic regression analysis was conducted, and a significant contribution of meal timing irregularity to subjective mental health was found under adjustment for other confounding factors. These results suggest that irregular meal timing is a good marker of subjective mental health issues.

Adolescent Breakfast Skipping Is Associated With Poorer Academic Performance: a School-based Study From Hidhabu Abote District, Ethiopia

Background: Breakfast is regarded as “the most important meal of the day”, suggested to positively affect learning in children and adolescent in terms of cognitive and school performance. Yet, studies in LMIC settings are few, and show very inconsistent results. Objective: To assess the prevalence and correlates of breakfast skipping and its association with school performance among randomly selected in-school adolescents in HidhabuAboteWereda North Shewa Zone, Central Ethiopia. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted from November to December 2020. A total of 422 participants were selected randomly from high schools of Hidhabu Abote Wereda. Data were entered in to Epiata version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 24 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariate binary logistic regression analysis identified factors that were significantly associated with the breakfast skipping. Odds ratio along with 95% Confidence interval was estimated to measure the strength of the association and level of statistical significance declared at p-value less than 0.05.Results: The magnitude of breakfast skipping was 41.3%, (95% CI: (36.6-46.0)].There was statistically significant association between breakfast skipping and overall academic performance [AOR: 5.18, 95%CI (1.54-7.46)], mathematics performance (3.88, 95%CI (1.34-11.22)], and English language performance scores [2.92, 95%CI (1.38-7.58)]. Being female [AOR = 1.857, 95% CI (1.05-3.27)], household food insecurity [AOR: 2.478, 95% CI (1.36-4.51)], and less maternal education [AOR: 1.89, 95%CL (3.38-7.77)] were independently associated with breakfast skipping. The primary reasons given for breakfast skipping were lack of time, lack of appetite in morning, and concerns around weight gain.Conclusion: Nearly half of in school adolescents were skipped breakfast meals, and reportedly in most cases for reasons unrelated to lack of food access. Students who skipped breakfast had lower levels of school performance.

Diurnal variations of brown fat thermogenesis and fat oxidation in humans

Background/objectives Disturbed circadian rhythm is associated with an increased risk of obesity and metabolic disorders. Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is a site of nonshivering thermogenesis (NST) and plays a role in regulating whole-body energy expenditure (EE), substrate metabolism, and body fatness. In this study, we examined diurnal variations of NST in healthy humans by focusing on their relation to BAT activity. Methods Forty-four healthy men underwent 18F-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography and were divided into Low-BAT and High-BAT groups. In STUDY 1, EE, diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT), and fat oxidation (FO) were measured using a whole-room indirect calorimeter at 27 °C. In STUDY 2, EE, FO, and skin temperature in the region close to BAT depots (Tscv) and in the control region (Tc) were measured at 27 °C and after 90 min cold exposure at 19 °C in the morning and in the evening. Results In STUDY 1, DIT and FO after breakfast was higher in the High-BAT group than in the Low-BAT group (P < 0.05), whereas those after dinner were comparable in the two groups. FO in the High-BAT group was higher after breakfast than after dinner (P < 0.01). In STUDY 2, cold-induced increases in EE (CIT), FO, and Tscv relative to Tc in the morning were higher in the High-BAT group than in the Low-BAT group (P < 0.05), whereas those after dinner were comparable in the two groups. CIT in the High-BAT group tended to be higher in the morning than in the evening (P = 0.056). Conclusion BAT-associated NST and FO were evident in the morning, but not in the evening, suggesting that the activity of human BAT is higher in the morning than in the evening, and thus may be involved in the association of an eating habit of breakfast skipping with obesity and related metabolic disorders.

The Window Matters: A Systematic Review of Time Restricted Eating Strategies in Relation to Cortisol and Melatonin Secretion

Time-Restricted Eating is an eating pattern based on the circadian rhythm which limits daily food intake (usually to ≤12 h/day), unique in that no overt restriction is imposed on the quality, nor quantity, of food intake. This paper aimed to examine the effects of two patterns of TRE, traditional TRE, and Ramadan fasting, on two markers of circadian rhythm, cortisol and melatonin. PubMed and Web of Science were searched up to December 2020 for studies examining the effects of time restricted eating on cortisol and melatonin. Fourteen studies met our inclusion criteria. All Ramadan papers found statistically significant decrease in melatonin (p < 0.05) during Ramadan. Two out of the three Ramadan papers noted an abolishing of the circadian rhythm of cortisol (p < 0.05). The non-Ramadan TRE papers did not examine melatonin, and cortisol changes were mixed. In studies comparing TRE to control diets, Stratton et al. found increased cortisol levels in the non-TRE fasting group (p = 0.0018) and McAllister et al. noted no difference. Dinner-skipping resulted in significantly reduced evening cortisol and non-significantly raised morning cortisol. Conversely, breakfast skipping resulted in significantly reduced morning cortisol. This blunting indicates a dysfunctional HPA axis, and may be associated with poor cardio-metabolic outcomes. There is a paucity of research examining the effects of TRE on cortisol and melatonin. The contrasting effect of dinner and breakfast-skipping should be further examined to ascertain whether timing the feeding window indeed has an impact on circadian rhythmicity.