Irritability and lower school performance: the consequences of 20% of adolescents not having breakfast before going to class

At the Gil de Junterón public institute, in Beniel (Murcia), the teacher María Jesús Guardiola asks her first-year high school students (16 years old) about their breakfast routine.

Of the 31 students that make up the classroom, 8 —almost a quarter— do not eat anything before leaving home and of the remaining 23, most have a glass of milk or coffee and products with a high sugar content.

No one eats fruit.

Furthermore, of those who skip the first meal of the day, six are girls.

The excuses that are heard the most are: "I prefer to sleep more and that's why I don't have time", "I'm not hungry" and "I feel bad".

It has always been said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

However, many Spanish adolescents skip this meal before going to class, so more than 12 hours pass between the last meal of the day before and the first of the following day.

Adolescents with these behaviors have lower school performance and may suffer irritability and fatigue, according to the vice president of the Spanish Association of Primary Care Pediatrics (AEPAP) Teresa Cenarro.

In 2018, data from the ANIBES study, prepared by the Spanish Nutrition Foundation, stated that one in five students left home in the morning without taking anything.

In addition, 35% of those who do eat breakfast do so inappropriately, says Rosaura Leis, coordinator of the Nutrition and Breastfeeding Committee of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP).

The foods they eat do not provide the necessary calories, or are not directly recommended for a healthy diet, says the pediatrician.

The habit of omitting the first meal of the day is more prevalent in girls than in boys.

During adolescence, they feel more pressure for their image on social networks and are more sensitive to the content they consume on them, which leads them to have a greater risk of suffering from deficit diets "with the false idea that they somehow save calories ”, Leis explains.

The number of students who do not eat breakfast increases with age and the highest figures are found in 4th year of Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO), 2nd year of high school and the middle grades of professional training, says Cenarro.

The expert adds that the classes and the physical exercise they do during the day, added to the wear and tear caused by the growth stage, mean that adolescents have to consume more calories than others to obtain the energy they need.

Ana Beatriz Rodríguez, professor of Physiology at the University of Extremadura, maintains that in Spain breakfast is not given the importance it requires.

To do it properly, you should take some food with vitamin C;

a somewhat exciting drink, such as cocoa milk or coffee;

and carbohydrates —the ideal is whole wheat bread with some protein food such as Serrano ham or turkey and a little olive oil—, indicates the expert.

"Even at that time, if you eat a sweet, it is perfectly metabolized," she concludes.

However, the reality is quite different.

Paco Botella, coordinator of the Nutrition area of ​​the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Nutrition (SEEN), acknowledges that in Spain adolescents "have a fatal breakfast."

They mainly consume ultra-processed products with a lot of sugar, such as industrial pastries, cookies, bottled juices and prepared dairy products such as chocolate shakes.

Rodríguez emphasizes the importance of the schedule.

He states that between eight and ten in the morning is when the body is best prepared to eat caloric foods and that they are metabolized correctly.

Gonzalo Pin, member of the pediatric working group of the Spanish Sleep Society, speaks of a "true fight against the biological clock".

All cells have one and if we make them work at times that are not programmed, for example, if we have breakfast at eleven in the morning and eat at four in the afternoon, "the effect is much worse" because the entire apparatus digestive system is not ready to receive food, argues the expert.

Esteban Álvarez, president of the Association of Directors of Public Institutes of Madrid (ADIMAD), maintains that this situation is spreading more and more.

Verónica Iglesias is a nurse at the Sierra de Guadarrama Institute in Soto del Real—a center directed by Álvarez—, and states that she attends, on average, between four and five students a day with dizziness or headaches because they have gone to class with the empty stomach.

“There are students who don't eat anything from dinner the day before until lunch the next day,” she laments.

More information:

Valter Longo: "If you change what you eat and add fasting, you can live 20 more years"

The health worker tells the case of a teenager who recently went to the institute's infirmary for hypoglycemia.

I had to give her something with sugar to make it go away, but the 14-year-old girl refused to take it because she was on the

diet —low carbs— and "she said that if she took sugar, she was skipping the diet," she says. churches.

Although educational centers put plans in place to promote the benefits of a healthy breakfast, both Álvarez and Iglesias emphasize the importance of inculcating these customs from home.

"If you eat healthy at home, away from home too", adds the president of ADIMAD.

Leis, a pediatrician at the AEP, adds that when minors eat breakfast as a family, their intake is better, both at this meal and at the rest of the day, because there is a transmission of healthy eating habits.

Young people who do not eat breakfast have a higher risk of obesity and overweight, say the nutritionist and pediatricians.

They arrive at the next meal with a greater feeling of hunger and that causes them to consume more calories, "which are also not always adequate," adds Cenarro.

Regarding this, Paco Botella, from SEEN, clarifies that the important thing is to focus on the general vision of the daily diet of each adolescent.

The expert argues that, although he does not eat anything when he gets up, if he eats the rest of the meals in a healthy way, it does not have to pose a problem for his health.

A 2021 study carried out in Catalonia placed the number of girls and boys, respectively, at 19% and 17%, who did not eat breakfast.

These figures increase to 30% and 28% if we talk about people in a disadvantaged socioeconomic situation.

In this sense, Rosaura Leis, from the AEP, and Teresa Cenarro, from the AEPAP, warn that in addition to skipping meals, the risk of eating a less healthy diet also increases.

The high price of fresh and healthy products means that, on many occasions, they have to buy ultra-processed products: "A package of private label buns or cookies is cheaper than fresh fruit," the AEPAP pediatrician explains.

Lack of sleep and bad eating habits

Professionals also highlight the influence of adolescent sleep schedules on these behaviors.

María José Martínez, coordinator of the chronobiology group of the Spanish Sleep Society (SES), explains that, during adolescence, the time for young people to go to sleep is delayed, but at the same time, after high school they have to enter between eight and half past eight in the morning, an hour earlier than in primary school.

This causes what is known as

During the week they accumulate fatigue and during the weekend they do not rest enough to start the next week with the necessary energy, so it becomes a vicious circle.

Gonzalo Pin, a member of the SES pediatric working group, explains that this omission of breakfast is the result of two factors: adolescents get up without appetite and they wake up late, so they don't have time to sit down at the table before to leave home.

In addition, according to the expert, there is a "direct relationship" between chronic sleep deficit and nutritional disturbances, since people tend to eat less healthy food, fatter and with more carbohydrates.

Both he and Martínez recommend delaying the start of classes in secondary and high school by one hour in order to combat this deficiency.

You can follow