Whether or not people have breakfast matters, but not in the way you might expect.
Findings published recently in the Journal of School Psychology show that eating a healthy breakfast can lead to higher levels of motivation and achievement for students that day in school. Meanwhile, eating no breakfast at all can lower levels of motivation and achievement.
The study, which was funded by the Australian Research Council and The Future Project at The King’s School, also found that eating an unhealthy breakfast had a similar detrimental effect on motivation and achievement as eating no breakfast at all.
Professor Andrew Martin is lead author of the study and an educational psychologist from UNSW.
“Many students make less-than-ideal breakfast choices at the start of the school day or skip breakfast altogether,” he said.
“Our findings highlight that eating a healthy breakfast each and every morning improves student motivation and academic achievement.”
The most important meal of the day
The research team studied 648 Australian high school students from five schools in New South Wales to investigate the role breakfast consumption and quality had on students’ self-reported motivation and achievement in a science test. They surveyed students on what they ate that morning and what they usually eat and created a score for their breakfast habits based on dietary guidelines from the National Health and Medical Research Council.
“In the survey, we asked many questions about their background to help us control for various factors including socioeconomic status, gender, physical activity, previous achievement and conscientiousness to isolate the impact of breakfast on motivation and achievement,” Prof. Martin said.
“We were also careful to time it right so we could better determine the process, with the breakfast in the morning preceding the levels of motivation and achievement we saw later that day.”
They found that students who ate a healthy breakfast the morning of the study were more motivated and achieved better test scores. Meanwhile, students who ate an unhealthy breakfast or no breakfast that morning measured lower for motivation and scored lower in their science test, regardless of whether they usually ate a healthy or unhealthy breakfast or previously performed well on science tests.
“As you might expect, eating a healthy breakfast every day is good for students’ motivation and achievement while skipping breakfast is not so good,” Prof. Martin said.
“Somewhat unexpectedly, eating an unhealthy breakfast could be as disruptive to motivation and achievement as not eating breakfast at all.
“In fact, simply having breakfast isn’t enough to gain the full benefits of eating breakfast; quality is also important for optimal motivation.”
