According to recent research at the University of Ulster in Ireland, girls may need a bigger breakfast to keep up with the boys in the classroom.
The study was lead by Dr. Barbara Stewart of the Northern Ireland Centre for Diet and Health, and the results found that young girls preformed better when they felt fully fed, but young boys performed better when they were left slightly hungry.
Stewart and associates studied 56 pupils aged 11 to 13 over a six-week period, feeding one group a breakfast of toast and another group toast topped with baked beans, and then testing the two different groups for memory and attention.
In addition to the discovery that girls need more food than boys, the researchers found that participants who ate beans and toast performed better than those who simply ate toast.
“There have been a number of studies into the relationship between high carbohydrate breakfast and the ability to concentrate, but [earlier] results have been unclear,” Stewart said in a press release for the Centre for Diet and Health.
University of Wisconsin nutritional science professor Susan Nitzke is doubtful when it comes to applying the Centre’s study to regular life.
“I have always been kind of skeptical of the difference between boys and girls in regards to nutrition,” Nitzke said.
Instead, Nitzke advises that students eat “any healthy food that they want” for breakfast, as long as it has some nutritional value.
“I think there’s this cultural stigma that you have to eat prepared ‘breakfast’ foods in order to have a complete breakfast,” Nitzke said, “but you can eat anything, a fruit salad if you like, it does not have to be just cereal or a bagel.”
In another recent study, the British Nutrition Foundation found that 43 percent of teenage girls ages 14-16 do not eat anything for breakfast. The Foundation’s survey of more than 5,200 youths aimed to discover typical teenage eating habits, as well as the teens’ level of knowledge about what healthy eating entails.
Along with the findings on the level of teens who skip breakfast, the Foundation also found that only 27 percent of teenagers ate fruit and vegetables often, and seven percent admitted they never ate them.
Foundation spokeswoman Sarah Schenker said, “the fact that the number of pupils not eating breakfast increases with age, and that more girls skip breakfast than boys, suggests that they are trying to lose weight.”
Students who use dieting to justify skipping breakfast could be deceiving themselves, according to Nitzke.
“Studies have shown that people who eat breakfast are thinner overall, and people who skip breakfast are more likely to gorge later in the day,” she said.
Health-conscious students should stick to a diet rich with fruits, veggies, whole grains and low-fat dairy products if they want to lose weight, Nitzke said.
“What you eat over the span of the whole day is more important than just what you eat for breakfast,” she said.
