The relation between breakfast skipping and school performance in adolescents

Breakfast skipping is common in adolescents, but research on the effects of breakfast skipping on school performance is scarce. This current cross-sectional survey study of 605 adolescents aged 11–18 years investigated whether adolescents who habitually skip breakfast have lower endof-term grades than adolescents who eat breakfast daily. Additionally, the roles of sleep behavior, namely chronotype, and attention were explored. Results showed that breakfast skippers performed lower at school than breakfast eaters. The findings were similar for younger and older adolescents and for boys and girls. Adolescents with an evening chronotype were more likely to skip breakfast, but chronotype was unrelated to school performance. Furthermore, attention problems partially mediated the relation between breakfast skipping and school performance. This large-scale study emphasizes the importance of breakfast as a determinant for school performance. The results give reason to investigate the mechanisms underlying the relation between skipping breakfast, attention, and school performance in more detail. Proper nutrition is commonly believed to be important for school performance; it is considered to be an essential prerequisite for the potential to learn in children (Taras, 2005). In the Western world, where most school-aged children are well nourished, emphasis is placed on eating breakfast for optimal school performance. Eating breakfast might be particularly important during adolescence. Adolescents have 1Department of Educational Neuroscience, VU University Amsterdam 2Centre for Learning Sciences and Technology, Open Universiteit Nederland 3School for Mental Health and Neuroscience, Maastricht University Address correspondence to Annemarie Boschloo, Faculty of Psychology and Education, VU University Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands; e-mail: a.m.boschloo@vu.nl. high nutritional needs, due to brain development processes and physical growth, while at the same time they have the highest rate of breakfast skipping among school-aged children (Hoyland, Dye, & Lawton, 2009; Rampersaud, 2009). However, not much is known about the effects of breakfast skipping on their school performance. Reviews indicate that only few studies have investigated the relationship between breakfast skipping and school performance in adolescents (Ells et al., 2008; Hoyland et al., 2009; Rampersaud, 2009; Taras, 2005). Therefore, the current study investigated the relation between habitual breakfast consumption and school performance in adolescents attending secondary school (age range 11–18 years). In addition, we explored two potentially important mechanisms underlying this relationship by investigating the roles of sleep behavior and attention. Depending on the definition of breakfast skipping, 10–30% of the adolescents (age range 11–18 years) can be classified as breakfast skippers (Rampersaud, Pereira, Girard, Adams, & Metzl, 2005). Adolescent breakfast skippers are more often girls and more often have a lower level of education (Keski-Rahkonen, Kaprio, Rissanen, Virkkunen, & Rose, 2003; Rampersaud et al., 2005; Shaw, 1998). Adolescent breakfast skippers are characterized by an unhealthy lifestyle, with behaviors such as smoking, irregular exercise, and alcohol and drug use. They make more unhealthy food choices and have a higher body mass index than breakfast eaters. Furthermore, they show more disinhibited behavior (Keski-Rahkonen et al., 2003; Rampersaud et al., 2005). Reasons adolescents give for skipping breakfast are that they are not hungry or do not have enough time (Shaw, 1998), although dieting seems to play a role as well (Rampersaud et al., 2005; Shaw, 1998). Experimental studies have investigated the relationship between breakfast skipping and cognitive functioning, which is assumed to underlie school performance. Breakfast skipping in children and adolescents appeared to affect memory and attention, especially toward the end of the morning (Ells et al., 2008; Hoyland et al., 2009; Rampersaud et al., 2005).