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I'm not a scientist by any means so I can't refute or support this – but posting it because it seems to conflict with Kiefer's research. ===Skipping breakfast before a day of school significantly reduced students' speed and accuracy on cognitive and memory tests compared with those who ate breakfast, according to a study recently published online in the journal Appetite.Researchers compared the performance of 1,386 students from 32 schools throughout the U.K. on several Internet-based tests of attention, memory and reaction time. Subjects included 721 girls and 665 boys age 6 to 16 who logged onto a website between 7:42 a.m. and 12:33 p.m. On testing day, 1,202 students reported having breakfast and 184 didn't have breakfast. A higher percentage of girls didn't have breakfast, 7.6% compared with 5.6% of boys.Compared with those who ate breakfast, students who skipped the morning meal had 7% slower power of attention, a measure of their ability to focus and avoid distraction. They also detected 7% fewer targets on target-detection tasks and correctly identified 9% fewer pictures on a picture-recognition test at a 9% slower speed than students who ate breakfast. Variability in response time, an indication of focusing consistency, was 10% more erratic in those who missed breakfast. Girls without breakfast were significantly more disrupted in their ability to focus than boys who didn't have breakfast, results showed.Test-score differences between the two groups were larger in those tested after 11 a.m. than those tested earlier in the morning.Caveat: The study didn't analyze the effects of different breakfast foods or caffeine consumption.Title: Breakfast is associated with enhanced cognitive function in schoolchildren. An internet based study http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443890304578010352467752828.html?mod=e2tw===At face value the article's research methodology seems lazy, merely measuring one group of non-breakfast eaters vs. a group of breakfast eaters. How can we be certain that it was the breakfast that caused the difference in test scores? There could be other variables at play right?I'd like to see a study the measures the performance of one group of students who normally eat breakfast on 3 separate days: 1 day when they eat breakfast, the next day when they skip breakfast, and 10 days later after having skipped breakfast for the entire time.
[...]Caveat: The study didn't analyze the effects of different breakfast foods or caffeine consumption.[...]
That pretty much makes this a useless study in my opinion (like so many epidemiological studies).
As for Intermittent Fasting, skipping breakfast is not intended for children but for adults.What means adult when we'r talking about students??
They didn't control for much more important variables such as socio-economic background, academic performance, ect.
^ precisely. the whole “breakfast food increases performance” argument stemmed from observational studies such as this. however, there's evidence to support a correlation between caloric intake & performance – such as wyon et al, which found a statically significant difference in physical endurance and creativity in children taking >10% and 20% of their daily recommended intake for breakfast here. however, the problem here is that over the 4 days of the trial, the kids were randomly assigned to different dietary groups on any given day, so there was no real chance for adaptation to a lower intake.more generally, pollitt & mathews, in meta-analysis, found no conclusive long or short term results from breakfast on cognitive faculties. hoyland, dye & lawton (also in meta-analysis) stated there were "relatively few good-quality studies that examine the effects of breakfast on the cognitive performance of school-aged children" and that, "the majority of the studies reviewed were sponsored in whole or in part by industry."from a macronutrient standpoint, in studying lower-calorie diets, brinkworth et al found no cognitive differences between adults fed a low-carb and that fed a low-fat diet. however, the adults on the low-carb diet reported lower mood levels. hoyland co-wrote another article on macronutrient manipulation and cognitive performance in children, but i don't have access to it unfortunately...finally, is there any evidence to suggest that we can draw conclusions from studies on children as to the effects on adults?
It also fails to take into account the overall quality of the childrens nutritional eating patterns the days before. If they are eating like crap the days leading up to the test, then I would imagine that morning their body will be in a deprived state.I can remember being a kid skipping breakfast and feeling like crap, counting the hours till lunch. But I was also eating like crap pretty much all the time, so my body was in a nutrient deficient state.
The Wall Street Journal hurts my focus the most.
This study is an observational study!!!!!Please drop it. BAD SCIENCEThere is an obvious correlation, for example, between the students whose parents make them eat breakfast and those whose parents offer extra support at home and would likely have read to them more as a child, helped them with homework etc. The neglected children are the ones whose parents don't care, don't feed them breakfast and also don't try to help them with school work.This 'study' is absolutely meaningless and the conclusion the 'scientists' have drawn here puts them to shame.
To all those who dismiss observational studies as “worthless” from a “scientific perspective”, I'm curious as to how you think hypothesis are generated, if not from observation…If you find yourself unable to be certain of anything from this study, it's not a shortcoming of the study, it's a result of your own confirmation bias that you're trying to. It's not my intention to come as condescending, but I really didn't know any other way to put it, and I'm a bit shocked that other than Gary Taubes, more people within this community aren't emphasizing this point. Somewhere along the line the idea that epidemiological and observational studies are somehow "worth less" than those investigating mechanism seems to have permeated the performance/nutrition community, and I would really urge those who think is somehow valid to examine the question of whether or not the latter would even exist without the former.
They could have done it better with a randomised trial. Even then, they would have issues with psychosomatic effects…I suppose there are ways they could make it double blind… Glucose vs water vs sweetener or something…
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