Passage Three

Generations of Americans have been brought up to believe that a good breakfast is one life’s essentials. Eating breakfast at the start of the day, we have all been told, and told again, is as necessary as putting gasoline in the family car before starting a trip.

But for many people the thought of food first thing in the morning is by no means a pleasure. So despite all the efforts, they still take no breakfast. Between 1977 and 1983, the latest year for which figures are available, the number of people who didn’t have breakfast, increased by 33 percent.

For those who feel pain of guilt about not eating breakfast, however, there is some good news. Several studies in the last few years indicate that, for adults especially, there may be nothing wrong with omitting breakfast. “Going without breakfast does not affect performance,” said Arrold E. Bender, former professor of the nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College in London, “nor does giving people breakfast improve performance.”

Scientific evidence linking breakfast to better health or better performance is surprisingly inadequate, and most of the recent work involves children, not adults, “The literature”, says one researcher, Dr. Erresto at the University of Texas, “is poor”.