Male teens ‘less attentive’ in school after skipping breakfast

A STUDY suggests adolescents and young adults may be less attentive in school when they skip breakfast. Moreover, the effect of missing this meal is different in boys and girls, the researchers found.

Dr Katharina Widenhorn-Mueller of Ulm University and her colleagues note in the medical journal Paediatrics that males reported being in a worse mood when they went without breakfast, and their visuo-spatial memory was also negatively affected, but the same wasn’t true of girls.

While parents and teachers often argue that eating breakfast is essential for school success, one review of more than 50 years of research on the topic found that “evidence in support of breakfast is equivocal,” noted Dr Widenhorn-Mueller and her team.