This month, we take a closer look at breakfast. The answer is clearer for children, but even with kids the research is incomplete. The best evidence that breakfast matters comes from studies in which children are kept overnight in a lab and given tests within a few hours of either eating or not eating breakfast. But not all studies agree, perhaps because they used different tests or different kinds of children. Still, if there's any reason to think that breakfast improves learning ability, it's sensible for parents or schools to make sure that kids get it.
Adults are a different story.
In some, breakfast didn't improve scores on tests of memory, reaction time, or tasks that require attention. 3,4 In others, breakfast boosted performance on some memory tests. And one study found that breakfast lowered scores on a logical reasoning test. Korol and others are trying to find out whether eating breakfast may help older people perform better on some tests because it supplies blood sugar to the brain. Lemonade improved some scores in some people, but the studies were too few, too small, and too inconsistent to reach any firm conclusions.