经常听人说早餐很重要不能错过。听说连中国的权威媒体新华社也发过一则消息，称几乎每个中国人都被叮嘱过“早饭要吃好”。早餐到底是重要还是不重要？早餐真的对人的营养很重要吗？
有英国研究人员不久前对此提出质疑，认为长期以来早餐的重要性缺乏科学论证，其背后可能隐藏商业利益。
英国巴斯大学营养学教师詹姆斯•贝茨博士接受《新科学家》杂志采访时说，一直以来，吃早餐被认为能促进人体新陈代谢、增加能量，尤其能降低午饭进食过量导致发胖的几率，“这些好处听起来很有道理，但大多只是基于观察的推论，并未经受过科学测试”。为检验早餐对人体健康的作用，贝茨博士要求一组测试者每天摄入热量约700卡路里的早餐，另一组只喝水。结果显示，喝水组成员午饭时只比吃早餐组吃得略多一点，超出部分的热量远不到700卡，这证明不吃早餐并不会导致体重增加。研究人员认为，过去几十年来早餐的重要性很可能被那些销售鸡蛋、麦片和火腿熏肉的商家刻意夸大。不过，研究人员同时也指出，不应把早餐的好处全部否认，最新的这项研究也并未涉及早餐对人精神状态和大脑活动的影响。
有的像在东南亚、澳大利亚、新西兰等南太平洋国家，生活节奏慢，生活在那里的人，习惯晚睡晚起，每天只有中午和晚上可言，他们还必须吃真正时间意义上的早餐吗？就像我们有不少人，一到周末就睡懒觉到中午，周末几乎只享受一天两顿。因为周末人完全由自己调控而放松，不被早中晚的时间所约束，早餐很难成为一种“纪律”，以上两种环境下的人们，他们不吃早餐后的健康情况比正常吃早餐的人群是好还是坏呢？有待科学家们进一步调查研究，得出科学的结论。
I often hear that breakfast is very important and can’t be missed. It is said that even China’s authoritative Xinhua news agency has sent a message saying that almost every Chinese has been told to “have a good breakfast”. Is breakfast important or not? Is breakfast really important for people’s nutrition?
Some British researchers questioned this not long ago, arguing that there has been a lack of scientific demonstration on the importance of breakfast for a long time, which may hide commercial interests.
Dr James Bates, a nutrition teacher at the University of bath in the UK, told New Scientist magazine that eating breakfast has always been considered to promote human metabolism and increase energy, especially reducing the chance of obesity caused by excessive lunch. “These benefits sound reasonable, but most of them are based on observation and have not been scientifically tested.”. To test the effect of breakfast on human health, Dr Bates asked one group to eat about 700 calories of breakfast a day, while the other group drank only water. The results showed that members of the water drinking group ate only a little more at lunch than those of the breakfast group, and the excess calories were far less than 700 calories, which proved that skipping breakfast did not lead to weight gain. Researchers believe that the importance of breakfast over the past few decades is likely to be deliberately exaggerated by businesses selling eggs, cereals and ham bacon. The researchers should not deny that breakfast has all the benefits of mental health.
Some South Pacific countries, such as Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, have a slow pace of life. People living there are used to sleeping late and getting up late. They only have noon and evening every day. Do they still have to eat breakfast in the real sense of time? Just like many of us, we sleep in until noon on weekends, and almost only enjoy two meals a day on weekends. Because weekend people are completely regulated and relaxed by themselves and are not constrained by the time of morning, middle and evening, breakfast is difficult to become a kind of “discipline”. Are people in the above two environments better or worse than those who eat breakfast? Scientists need to further investigate and draw scientific conclusions.
（美国华文网 圣地亚哥华文网 华文风采 Reporter: Ranxin Shi, Editor: Fei Lu USChinesePress.com SanDiegoChinesePress.com）