he widely accepted notion that skipping breakfast might cause weight gain entered the Dietary Guidelines in 2010

he widely accepted notion that skipping breakfast might cause weight gain entered the Dietary Guidelines in 2010. However, it is based on scientific speculation, not certainty. Indeed, it may be completely unfounded, as an experiment in New York indicated

“In overweight individuals, skipping breakfast daily for 4 weeks leads to a reduction in body weight,” the researchers from Columbia University concluded in a paper published last year

The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee explained that in previous years, researchers generally conducted observational studies, in support of the notion that skipping breakfast might make one fat. Although this method is cheaper and easier to carry out, its weaknesses can lead scientists astray

One of the primary troubles is confounders, which can lead researchers to make mistaken assumptions about causes. For example, suppose breakfast skippers have a personality trait that makes them more likely to gain weight than breakfast eaters. If that’s the case, it may look as if skipping breakfast causes weight gain even though the cause is the personality trait

In analyzing the results of observational studies, scientists make statistical adjustments to minimize the potential confounding factors that they can measure — age, alcohol consumption, exercise, employment, and the like. But the adjustments are imprecise, and there is no guarantee that the groups are not different in some other unmeasured way. Because of those weaknesses, many scientists prefer randomized controlled trials, which they often say provides the "gold standard" in evidence

When in the coming months the government unveils the 2015 Dietary Guidelines, it is unclear the advice on breakfast and weight gain will be included. The 2015 advisory committee issued a report that steered clear of the subject of skipping breakfast and weight

President of Millennium Prevention, a life sciences start-up company, and chair of the 2015 advisory committee, Barbara Millen said, “The sentiment was we don’t have to say anything further about it. We didn’t want to focus on a laundry list of foods and meals. We were focusing on overall dietary patterns.”