Healthy breakfast may mean healthier diet overall

Crap research. Crap reporting. Or both. Plus possible payola.

"Breakfast may indeed be the most important meal of the day -- as long as that meal is not a doughnut -- a study suggests.

Using data from a national health survey of U.S. adults, researchers found that people who ate lower-calorie foods for breakfast tended to have a higher-quality diet overall."

It is not breakfast.

It is caloric intake control.

What appears to matter most in this article is the possible payola.

"The current findings underscore the importance of choosing low-energy- density options for breakfast, according to Rippe, a cardiologist with the Rippe Lifestyle Institute in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.

The Rippe organization manages the Breakfast Research Institute, an industry-sponsored group that funds health and nutrition research. The BRI financed the current study."

If people did not eat breakfast and consumed fewer Calories than they burned, they would lose weight.

If people ate breakfast and consumed more Calories than they burned, they would gain weight.

And it is really likely that people who eat "low" Calorie meals, by the end of the day have consumed fewer Calories than people who eat "high" Calorie meals.

What you eat and when you eat it makes little to no difference in weight unless eating breakfast keeps you from eating out of control the rest of the day.

The focus should be on Calories in vs. Calories out.

The when of eating is relatively unimportant compared to total caloric intake.