Skipping breakfast increases cardiovascular and all-cause mortality By Dr. Zhang | 不吃早餐增加心血管和全因死亡率 | 章博士說長壽

Editor’s comment:

Studies like one reported in the video cannot establish a cause-effect relationship.  Does skipping breakfast is the cause of increased cardiovascular mortality?  Not necessarily.  Studies of this sort are welcome by food companies which do not want people to skip breakfast.  If consumers only eat two meals, guess how much loss in revenue would the food companies suffer?

The fact is that people in the West tend to overeat which is the root of many chronic diseases including cardiovascular diseases.  Skipping breakfast is a bad idea for those who do laborious work in the morning.  But it is not too bad an idea for those who do office work which does not require too much caloric expenditure.  For those people, skipping breakfast is a way of fasting.  It has been a common sense that most people do not have an appetite in the morning, which has a reason.

People who practice intermittent fasting often skip breakfast.  They eat meals in a span of 8 or 6 hours or less, often from noon to 6:00 pm in the afternoon.  By the way, eating dinner after 7:00 can be harmful to a person’s health.  Japanese found people who eat dinner late tend to have stomach problems.

In short, the study per se cannot say that skipping breakfast increases the rate of cardiovascular death.

編輯評論：

視頻中報導的一項研究無法建立因果關係。不吃早餐是心血管死亡率增加的原因嗎？不必要。這類研究受到不希望人們不吃早餐的食品公司的歡迎。如果消費者只吃兩頓飯，你猜食品公司會損失多少收入？

事實上，西方人往往暴飲暴食，這是包括心血管疾病在內的許多慢性疾病的根源。不吃早餐對於那些早上做艱苦工作的人來說是個壞主意。但對於那些不需要太多熱量消耗的辦公室工作的人來說，這不是一個太糟糕的主意。對於那些人來說，不吃早餐是一種禁食方式。大多數人早上沒有胃口，這是一個常識，這是有原因的。

練習間歇性禁食的人經常不吃早餐。他們在 8 或 6 小時或更短的時間內進餐，通常是從中午到下午 6:00。順便說一句，7:00 後吃晚餐可能對人的健康有害。日本人發現晚飯吃得晚的人往往有胃病。

簡而言之，這項研究本身並不能說不吃早餐會增加心血管疾病的死亡率。