There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The fact that research shows that breakfast is actually beneficial for children is hand-waved away because 'reasons'.
This is honestly just a low-quality, cherry-picked opinion piece by someone who really doesn't like breakfast.
Actually he gives very reasoned arguments and comments on meta-studies showing that he is right -- not that breakfast is bad, but in that it doesn't make any difference, and if it does nobody has clearly shown it.
(a) . In a paper published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2013, researchers reviewed the literature on the effect of breakfast on obesity to look specifically at this issue. They first noted that nutrition researchers love to publish results showing a correlation between skipping breakfast and obesity.
(b) However, they also found major flaws in the reporting of findings. People were consistently biased in interpreting their results in favor of a relationship between skipping breakfast and obesity. They improperly used causal language to describe their results. They misleadingly cited others’ results. And they also improperly used causal language in citing others’ results.
(c) Few randomized controlled trials exist. Those that do, although methodologically weak like most nutrition studies, don’t support the necessity of breakfast.
(d) Further confusing the field is a 2014 study (with more financial conflicts of interest than I thought possible) that found that getting breakfast skippers to eat breakfast, and getting breakfast eaters to skip breakfast, made no difference with respect to weight loss. But a 1992 trial that did the same thing found that both groups lost weight. A balanced perspective would acknowledge that we have no idea what’s going on.
(e) Many of the studies are funded by the food industry, which has a clear bias. Kellogg funded a highly cited article that found that cereal for breakfast is associated with being thinner. The Quaker Oats Center of Excellence (part of PepsiCo) financed a trial that showed that eating oatmeal or frosted cornflakes reduces weight and cholesterol (if you eat it in a highly controlled setting each weekday for four weeks).
Your comment however, reads exactly like you describe his, but for the opposite preference.
Exactly because the sense of hunger is not correlated with the exact need to eat is that we have obesity.
Eating only when hungry sounds like a good idea but then you get (usually fat) people complaining they are hungry all the time.
An average adult will spend around 12h (and probably more) physiologically fine without food, until its glycogen reserves are depleted.
In terms of "consume" in general, there is an intense commercial pressure to get you to "consume" more. Oddly you don't see ads pressuring you to eat lunch or eat dinner, although Taco Bell used to advertise "fourthmeal" for a while.
Those people have no idea what is like to be actually hungry -- in the literal, haven't eater for 2 days sense.
They just have cravings.
The disconnect between hunger and the need to eat may be an artifact of the separation of flavor from nutrition in modern, engineered "foods". To me it seems that hunger must have evolved as a fundamental signal to do or not do exactly what it's about (eat) but that it's been disrupted by modern developments.
However, the skipped breakfast was not the cause of my overweight, but simply the result of eating far too much in the evening. So maybe there actually is a correlation, but as always: Correlation does not imply causation.
You've also neglected to mention (f), where the author discusses studies that show that breakfast is beneficial to children and then handwaves both of them away:
> What about the argument that children who eat breakfast behave and perform better in school? Systematic reviews find that this is often the case.
and
> It has been found that children who skip breakfast are more likely to be overweight than children who eat two breakfasts.
> One of the reasons that breakfast seems to improve children’s learning and progress is that, unfortunately, too many don’t get enough to eat. [...] It’s not hard to imagine that children who are hungry will do better if they are nourished.
Seems a pretty valid point as opposed to handwaving. Nutrition research in general has a pretty studious history of ignoring results in an attempt to support pre-existing conclusions.
For support of last statement, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-ration (side note: military nutrition has a long and interesting involvement with civilian nutrition guidelines)
Here's the thing though: he has every scientific and methodological right to do so.
It's those making a claim (that breakfast is good) that have to prove it.
If they fail to provide evidence for their claim, those who like the author merely point out that their research is weak don't have to prove breakfast is neutral.
What if overweight children are more likely to skip breakfast?
With the attention paid to this topic, if no causal relationship has been found, then it does imply (though not conclusively) that in most circumstances breakfast does not have any strong, meaningful beneficial (or magical) effect.
And that's almost exactly what this post suggests:
> The bottom line is that the evidence for the importance of breakfast is something of a mess. If you’re hungry, eat it. But don’t feel bad if you’d rather skip it, and don’t listen to those who lecture you. Breakfast has no mystical powers.
> people have different metabolisms and if you are hungry in the morning you should eat and if you are not you shouldn't
Bodies don't always cooperate, if you are going to exercise strenuously in a given day you had better eat some kind of breakfast whether your body feels like it or not.
Breakfast is always going to be the opportunity to eat when you have more of the day ahead of you. That's true by definition, and it's the principle behind the chestnut about it being the most important meal of the day. There isn't much more to it than that.
Or what? As someone who has undertaken week long fasts while participating in competitive sports with no discernible performance difference, I'm skeptical. Your body doesn't "run out of fuel" because you haven't eaten for 12 hours.
Everyone is different. These rules of thumb, including breakfast being extra special, are silly.
I've done many multi-day hikes and a 24 mile one-day hike. I can confirm that eating breakfast before setting out in the morning is absolutely crucial. Like the old saying goes, an army marches on its stomach.
I'm normally not hungry in the morning, so this was a challenge. The few times I did skip breakfast on these hikes, I had to stop half-an-hour in to correct my mistake, as I felt completely drained.
Shockingly, people are different. I much prefer a snack on the trail to breakfast before.
Just like drinking when thirsty is drinking too late.
Its more like "I don't eat breakfast, because I'm not hungry at that time". In your haste to paint the author as biased, you ended up sounding the same.
It seems that your comment is equally handwavy :)
As a casual observer of this topic, it seems like breakfast is necessary for humans who want to grow: kids and people adding muscle mass.
If you want to lose weight or maintain breakfast can probably be skipped.
There is a very large following of Intermittent Fasting in the bodybuilding community. Tens/hundreds of thousands of consistent weightlifters who do not eat breakfast or lunch and put on impressive mass. Your body doesn't care about daily fluctuations, calories in/calories out, count your macros. Fin.
So I disagree with your casual conclusion.
For example, not being overweight is good for you. The existence of people who survive famine because they started out obese doesn't disprove that.
For instance, if you have to get to work at 5am, are you better off waking up earlier to eat breakfast? In this case, the cost of lost sleep may be greater than the benefit of breakfast.
The NYT article points out that many of the studies that claim breakfast is good may be flawed. If that's true, then we are likely overestimating the benefit of breakfast. And that means that in many cases where we thought
perceived_benefit(breakfast) > cost(breakfast)
it could actually be that
real_benefit(breakfast) < cost(breakfast)
Can you apply the same logic there?
I love this website for health science news and wish there were more like it: http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx
In each article they break down what the actual study was, how robust the evidence is and what it says in the context of other research which you never see in mainstream press.
For example, this article traces a flurry of headlines in the mainstream press about the importance of breakfast back to the original research and critically looks at the evidence in depth: http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/08August/Pages/Breakfast-not%20t... It nearly always end in "needs further study" but it's sad there's no incentive for news outlets to have more accurate science reporting.
The discovery of vitamins led to Wonder Bread, when we thought that we could make highly processed white flour healthy by adding vitamins. We now know that Wonder Bread, despite the vitamins, is one of the least healthy things you can put into your body since it basically converts directly to sugar. And that's just one example, the middle of a supermarket is replete with boxes of processed foods which claims to have added healthy stuff that have consistently made the people who consume them less healthy than the people who get their food from the produce and deli aisles, where there's no added vitamins and no such health claims.
If we've learned one immutable truth from recent health studies, it's that we're really bad at constructing foods that are healthier than what nature has already constructed. That's not to say that we shouldn't continue to try to learn about what's in the foods we eat, but that information should be used to constitute a diet of natural foods rather than foods engineered to be healthy.
Research, especially when it's reported without understanding like the media typically does, leads to fads that almost always turn out to be wrong. It's how we spent 4 decades trying to eat low fat which led to the highest obesity and diabetes rates ever. Meanwhile, those eating traditional diets based on the foods that their ancestors have eaten for generations are consistently healthier. Given that we know so much more about vitamins and minerals than they do, how is that they're so much healthier than us? If our understanding of vitamins hasn't made us healthier, is it really a big step forward?
[1] https://metasteve.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/in-defense-of-foo...
Nixtamalization is an easy example of a process that enhances nutrition. Perhaps the world would be better if people were not constrained to eating so much corn that it mattered, but that isn't the world we have. The list of beneficial processes goes on and on and on, but I like that one because it involves adding caustic chemicals to a starchy grain. Another good one is pickling. Controlled rotting with those hip probiotics!
The issue with modern food science isn't that it is over reductionist nonsense, it's that it is used to decrease satiation and increase palatability. It turns out that when huge resources are devoted to figuring out how to get people to eat more, you get results. I cringe every time I see Sabra Hummus advertise their great new idea, a fourth meal where you and your family cram Sabra Hummus in your mouth.
I certainly hope we can take our medical understanding of diet and nutrition to a place where it is easier to help people lead healthy lives, but I'm not going to sit here and look at the elimination of deficiency diseases as the start of some sort of modern disaster.
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/12/the-end-of-food
The average American meal is not a healthy, fulfilling group activity. Soylent is there to replace those meals and free up time and money to more frequently enjoy the other type of meal (or whatever else you might want to do with your time).
"How does changing the raw materials going into this mind-bogglingly complex collection of biochemical processes we call a body affect the whole?" is a rather difficult question to answer.
I recall hearing a story about how the father of modern public relations and propaganda (Eddie Bernays) played a key role in making sure that bacon and eggs were a part of an American breakfast. You can watch him in this interview explain how he created and manipulated a poll of 5,000 physicians to convince the public they should be eating a heavy breakfast consisting of bacon and eggs.
All the ads showed the bowl of cereal next to a 12oz glass of milk, an 8oz glass of orange juice, buttered toast, a colorful piece of fruit, maybe some jelly on the toast, and the cereal box. All the kids who actually ate it just got the cereal with some milk poured over it. It was dumped directly down the gullet with a funnel, because you only had 8 minutes left to get to the school bus stop, which was a 5 minute walk from your front door.
I'm eating the same healthy foods as before, but simply varying when I eat them and breaking free from the accepted norms of what to eat, when has had a marked effect on my energy and concentration. The usual YMMV, sample-of-one disclaimers apply, but I'd encourage people to play around with their notions of when certain foods should be consumed and see if there's a better option for you than what society suggests universally for everyone.
Italian breakfast is a shot of espresso. Maybe a croissant if you're really that hungry. Then you get a monster lunch at noon.
Neither system is superior, it's just what works in either culture. Which is to say, there is no universal nutrition advice since everyone's body and microbiome and working culture is different. Pick and choose what works for you because only you process the food you eat.
No thanks, I'll take a pass on the malware this time and just read the comments from people willing to get through on here.
It's sad how the entitlement mentality convinces people that they not only have the right to consume all media on the web for free, but they also have the absolute, inalienable right to view it without looking at ads. Because the
It seems very juvenile to me. "I want everything for free, even if it does cost money to create, and if I can't have it free, I'm going to post to complain about it!"
Maybe like a PayPal for Paywalls, to start a subscription with one click?
But using AdBlockPro, I had no issues with this link.
Hunger is something that can be trained, not simply a static phenomenon. There's a reason you get hungry when you smell something delicious. If you eat every day shortly after waking up, I'd certainly expect to be hungry at that time.
I was never particularly hungry during my accidental 16-ish hour "fast". In fact, I usually had to force myself to eat a bit extra just to bring my daily calorie count up to something reasonable.
EDIT: I should also point out that I trained myself to fast during college. One day a week I wouldn't eat at all. Now, when I get hungry, the feeling will last for a little bit then go away.
Thoughts?
Not a fan of gimmicky diets but my eating pattern seems similar to "the warrior diet", look it up if you're curious. I just think that in nature (if we were wild humans) we wouldn't have access to a huge meal right out of bed, We'd have to work hard all day to hunt and gather our food, then celebrate as a group with a food orgy around the fire.... okay I got a bit carried away :P
I'm a woman, and on birth control, so fasting doesn't mess with my hormones so much, but I read that women tend to respond to fasting with heightened color vision and vivid sensorial experiences, which I can anecdotally confirm.
That said, I can only practice intermittent fasting for one to two days at a time before it starts negatively affecting my workouts and attention span.
To anybody who decides they're going to try it: If you've gone through years of "6 meals a day" and suddenly fast for 24 hours, you're gonna have a bad time. Take it slow. Otherwise you'll feel cold, irritable, and distracted and will assume fasting is something only masochistic sociopaths can do.
Because wouldn't that be the time you "break" your "fast".
I don't disagree with the it started as first meal of the day regardless of time of day, but these days it is more likely to mean morning meal than it is first meal of the day.
You could refer to the concept of breakfast, the meal, and also the common food of breakfast, bacon and eggs, with the same word.
In PT-BR, our term translates to "morning coffee", and in PT-PT translates as "little lunch" (from french, petit déjeuner).
(Actually we also have a translation for breakfast - desjejum - but its not commonly used.)
edit: breakfast used to be called déjeuner, but it has been replaced by petit-déjeuner (little déjeuner literally) in some regions (including France). Other regions still call the first meal déjeuner.
You don't break a fast anyway, it's a metaphor. You can only break physical things. You interrupt it. Wait, that just means between + break in Latin. That doesn't even make sense - you're ending the fast, not pausing it... but wait, aren't you pausing it - because eventually you'll cease eating. Maybe all words are just convenient labels using metaphors to help us remember them. Anarchy!
edit: I thought about it a little longer, and wondered if "end" might be a better word, then realized that was a physical metaphor too. I've finally settled on a word that makes strict sense: "terminate." From now on, the appropriate word for the first meal you eat after not eating, no matter the time of day or even whether there was a period during that time when you were sleeping (hence every single meal and every single snack) will be "fastermination." And you shouldn't look at me weirdly when I say that; I'm just using English (or Latin or whatever) properly, and in the grand scheme of things, I'm more right than you are.
Descriptively, breakfast is clearly an early-morning meal eaten within an hour or two of the end of sleep. There is also, at least in America where I can speak for it, a set of associated "breakfast foods", making it reasonable to "have breakfast for dinner" and most people know what you mean. (i.e., even my 5-year-old knew precisely what that meant when I first said it, so one should carefully consider one's internet-pedant options before claiming that makes no sense :) ) Prescriptively one could make a case for "the meal that breaks your fast", though I daresay it would be a rather weak case. The term "fast" is almost dead in modern American English, though it may be making a comeback via things like Intermittent Fasting: https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/08/06/a-beginners-guid... (Which, for the purposes of this post, I'm merely pointing out a word usage. Though I do it myself now, I'm not defending or advocating it here.)
Referring to your first meal, at 8pm without having slept away the day, as "breakfast" is outside most people's understanding of the word, though it is, strictly speaking, correct.
It's like the various meanings and uses of the word "decimate". The literal and historical meaning is to remove 1 out of 10 of a group, such as in combat against enemy forces or as punishment of some group or something. Today, it means removing a large percentage. "The army was decimated" today means that a large percentage (subjective) was killed or wounded.
Subjective meaning: Some might say 10% is large, others might mean 80%. And it depends on the initial size. 10% of 100 is only 10, that doesn't seem large. But 10% of 1,000,000 is 10,000, that's substantial though the percentage itself may appear small.
To flip the bias there, you could call the prescriptive point of view the "words have meaning ordained by God and it doesn't matter what anyone actually says" point of view, and call the descriptive point of view the "evidence-based" point of view.
When people say "breakfast", do they mean the moment of breaking one's fast? A prescriptivist would say "yes, obviously, it's right there in the word". A descriptivist would say "probably not, because everybody understands what it means to 'skip breakfast'."
People who are college students, young professionals, esp. developers and entrepreneurs often work late into the night, either because they're partying or because they want to put that one problem to bed before they go themselves.
They often eat small snacks at night. Some wake up early, some wake up late, but many rush to work and forget breakfast.
As a result, their bodies adjust to intermittent fasting, and they actually have good calorie intake. Provided they don't eat junk food.
People who have been doing that since their early 20s are for the most part not overweight.
That's my theory. You could also do intermittent fasting by skipping dinner, but few night owls would do that. Instead, they eat dinner and some snacks at night, it digests overnight and they aren't hungry in the morning.
But don't barrage me with "it's the most important meal of the day" old wife tales, when you don't understand my lack of hunger.
One of the reasons they are so hard to update is because these same media outlets and government agencies were the ones that foisted the myths on us in the first place, usually for money, and they are now telling us the truth about some things with the same tone as they told us the lies.
This is the attention economy: it's what you get when you combine news with capitalism.
This is the real piece of truth in this article.
I actually even had to stop the training sometimes because I had to vomit. (probably too low blood sugar)
During that time I made very slow progress.
Since I started to eat breakfast 2-3 hours before training I never had any issues and I also gain more weight (muscles)
I think this is the important part. Breakfast (the morning meal) isn't the critical factor, it's having the nutrients (proteins, sugars, etc.) in your body when you need it. If you worked out in the evening, like me, you'd probably find that a decent sized lunch + a small mid-afternoon snack would be fine, breakfast optional.
Being hungry is something that I'm very used to, but in the gym it's extremely counterproductive. Couldn't perform with more than ~85-90% of my maximum strength and just aborted the whole workout.
I used to not eat breakfast. I'd be starving at 11:45am when it was time to go out to lunch with my coworkers.
I decided to make some changes in my diet so I wasn't so hungry for lunch and could make better choices. Started eating a healthy breakfast every morning.
I was starving by 12:00pm.
So, for my anecdatel point, I think it has more to do with when your body expects food than actual hunger.
I'm disappointed on how the author missed intermittent fasting which, even not being scientific consensus, has many studies in favor of not breaking the fast.
That sounds exactly like the thing the author tries to demonstrate: There isn't a clear-cut evidence that breakfast is important, or that it is bad.
Therefore, it is better to have a good breakfast and lunch so you can skip dinner or have very light dinner (lean protein, veggies).
If you skip breakfast, you will have to eat dinner/late dinner. Goodbye good night sleep.
This is fairly amusing. First, coffee is a well known appetite suppressant. Second, unless coffee is black it is probably far from zero calories, with dairy and sugar maybe between 200-300 [empty] calories which would be in the ball park of bacon and an egg.
Of course some starbucks drinks can easily be >600 calories so who knows, the author could be drinking a coffee every morning that is closer to the caloric equivalent of pancakes with syrup.
Or not. The effect of caffeine as an appetite suppressant is nowhere close to letting you skip a meal (that's what we are talking about when saying breakfast, not 5 corn flakes with a sip of milk). A lot of people take their tea/coffee without sugar and the calorie content of a table spoon of milk is negligible.
I don't know what you mean by saying caffeine doesn't let someone skip a meal, no one is asking permission. Most can skip a meal with or without caffeine, but the caffeine would only help curb hunger pains in those few hours before lunch. I am not suggesting caffeine has some magical properties (though we all know it does).
>A lot of people take their tea/coffee without sugar and the calorie content of a table spoon of milk is negligible.
Ok lets use your example of how a lot of people take their tea/coffee. A Starbucks 16oz coffee with no sugar and just 2% milk still has over 100 calories (120), just shy of a 12oz coke (140).
Clearly, whether or not that is negligible is sadly a matter of opinion more than science, because you say it is and I say its not. Consider this though, while sugar in coke is no doubt the larger health issue, you won't find to many people who say the amount of empty calories from a coke every day over a year is negligible (maybe just the Coke people themselves, but they will also say the sugar isn't an issue). Nevertheless, what you define as negligible calories is still more than an egg, still more than 2 pieces of bacon...and none of the nutritional value.
Not sure how they manage to squeeze that amount of calories in their coffee but that is indeed some serious calories intake. People around me that take a breakfast take both a coffee and a breakfast. I wonder how much calories that would amount to at Starbuck, but I guess that would set me up for the whole day.
edit: Just looked at the website. Indeed 120 calories for their 16oz Americano. The 2% you mentioned is 2% fat milk, i.e. skimmed here. Another reason not to go to Starbuck I guess.
A 16oz, Ice Coffee (which is what I prefer so that's what I'm posting), is a mere 5 calories[0] - drip coffee with no sweetener or splenda or some other low/no calorie sweetener would be the same.
[0] - http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/iced-coffee/iced-coffee...
>Second, unless coffee is black it is probably far from zero calories, with dairy and sugar maybe between 200-300 [empty]
Notwithstanding the fact that you and I tend to drink coffee black, we likely are in the minority. The fact that starbucks beverages are over 200 calories at a ratio of 5:1 tend to support my assumptions about the demands of the market (based on a sample of 51 starbucks beverages).
I think a lot of people took issue with my figures (200-300), but they are starbucks figures not mine. Still my point remains, even if an average coffee is 120 calories a number others have conceded who otherwise said I grossly exaggerated, I wouldn't consider that skipping breakfast insofar as one can have a very nutritious breakfast for that amount of calories (say 1 whole egg and 2-3 egg whites; even bacon and an egg).
That is for a Cafe Misto, which is half-milk. Most people do not put nearly that much milk or cream in their coffee.
http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/brewed-coffee/iced-coff...
Notwithstanding the fact most people do not use half-milk, I think you can look at the fact the starbucks drinks are >200 calories at a rate of 5:1 as indicative of the market demands.
Just look at their list of best beverages[1]:
1. 540 cal/16oz 2. 470 cal/16oz 3. 250 cal/16oz 4. 360 cal/16oz 5. 190 cal/16oz 6. 440 cal/16oz 7. 250 cal/16oz 8. 380 cal/16oz 9. 440 cal/16oz 10. 35 cal (1.5oz)
[1]http://www.starbucksdrinks.com/best-starbucks-drinks-list
> http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/brewed-coffee/iced-coff...
That drink is not just milk and coffee. It contains a flavored simple syrup and falls squarely in the realm of "coffee-flavored beverages".
> Notwithstanding the fact most people do not use half-milk, I think you can look at the fact the starbucks drinks are >200 calories at a rate of 5:1 as indicative of the market demands.
Honestly, the market demand is for coffee-flavored beverages, not for real coffee. Calling the majority of what Starbucks sells "coffee" is really pushing it. Conflating that shit with actual coffee, black or doctored, is ridiculous.
Entirely my point...coffee can mean anything from zero calories black coffee to a 600+ calorie sugary sludge. Moreover, just because people claim they skip breakfast and only have coffee (such as the author), that does not mean they are consuming zero calorie black coffee.
It shouldn't be controversial my asking if it is really skipping a breakfast if they are consuming a beverage that exceeds the calories found in a nutritious breakfast. I'm surprised my observation has resulted in down votes, then again I assume my comments about people - as you eloquently state - conflating that shit with actual coffee, probably hits very close to home for a lot of people, and no one likes hearing their habits are unhealthy.
Is that a real thing or just figurative speech? Only pain I ever got from hunger was headache.
Pains is used interchangeably with pangs, but yes it is a real thing.
A grande Starbucks cappuccino is 120 calories. Nonfat brings it down to 80. A grande dark roast at Starbucks is 5 calories, 1 tsp of sugar is 16 calories, and 1oz of milk is 12 calories. Unless you're drinking milk and sugar with a splash of coffee, you won't get anywhere near 200-300 calories.
Even a peppermint mocha with whipped cream - pretty much one of the sweetest drinks you'll find at Starbucks - only has 440 calories, so you'd need to really add a lot of syrups to get to >600.
>Even a peppermint mocha with whipped cream - pretty much one of the sweetest drinks you'll find at Starbucks - only has 440 calories, so you'd need to really add a lot of syrups to get to >600.
Example: Iced White Chocolate Mocha = 640 calories
>A grande Starbucks cappuccino is 120 calories.
I would say the 120 is fair for an average consumer on an average day and purposes of my point. I would still say that is a substantial amount of empty calories. Its really no different than having a 12 oz coke every morning from an empty calorie point of view. Again my main point is the calories from coffee didn't even enter the authors mind when even at 120 calories the coffee could easily replaced with a nutritious breakfast of say 1 whole egg and 2-3 egg whites (~120 calories).
Edit: a Google Search of "Starbucks nutritional information" shows a menu of 51 drinks of those 40 go above 200 calories (most well exceed 300) and only 11 can't be made to order above 200.
So, in your opinion a glass of milk is empty calories, no different from a Coke?
Its not opinion, but by definition milk is not empty calories like sugary coffees and coke, because it contains nutritional value above food energy. But my opinion would be to avoid milk. Here is my quick analysis:
16 oz of milk is ~250 cal and ~25g of sugar, that is a lot of calories and sugar for the comparative nutritional value (minimal protein and vitamins). To put it in perspective that is 100% of the daily sugar intake suggested by the AHA yet only 1/3 the daily protein intake (for women).
Again one would be much better off replacing that 250 calories in a glass of milk for a breakfast of say 3 egg omelette with spinach (~250) on a daily basis because they would get much better nutritional value and avoid an inevitable sugar surplus. Really this circles around to my original point, if people are consuming even 100 calories from coffee in the morning, they are not really skipping a meal, because a healthy breakfast could come in 100 calories...that is an egg and slice of bacon or one egg omelette with a green vegetable.
So let me ask you if someone has a 120 calorie sugary coffee or 250 calorie glass of milk (100% daily sugar, 1/3 daily protein) in the morning, is that really the same as skipping a meal?