The Breakfast Habit That Could Increase Your Early Death Risk

If you've ever heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, that's just the echo of ancient marketing campaigns that you're listening to, some of which are over 100 years old. But that doesn't mean that eating a healthy breakfast isn't important. On the contrary, there are numerous studies that show a link between skipping breakfast and an early death from things like cancer and heart disease. 

A 2024 study published in Food & Function conducted a meta-analysis of nine studies examining all-cause mortality, cancer mortality, and cardiovascular disease (CVD). In total, these nine studies were made up of over 242,000 participants and found that skipping breakfast resulted in a 27% higher risk of an early death from any cause, a 28% higher risk of dying from CVD, and a 34% higher risk for an early cancer death.

An earlier study from 2019 comprising nearly 200,000 adults found similar numbers, while a 2025 study made up of over 185,000 participants found that having a healthy cereal for breakfast resulted in a reduced risk for all-cause mortality.

Most research indicates that skipping breakfast is correlated with unfavorable health outcomes, but correlation is not causation, and while there might be some truth to these studies, there's probably more going on beneath the surface. For instance, many of these studies note that skipping breakfast is likely a trait of someone with an unhealthy lifestyle. 

The 2019 study notes that people who skip breakfast are more often smokers or drinkers (both banned on the ISS, by the way), eat at irregular hours, have lower levels of physical activity, and eat more processed foods. These associations are almost certainly contributing to the increased incidence of early death among breakfast skippers.

But that doesn't mean the missing meal isn't playing a part. A study from September 2025 looked at the connection between skipping breakfast and CVD on a genetic level to filter out any confounding factors and still found the same association between skipping breakfast and poor health outcomes. In particular, it found a dose–response relationship between missing breakfast and worse health risk. In other words, the more often you skip breakfast, the higher your risk for CVD and heart attack.

All of these breakfast studies are data points in an emerging new science called chrononutrition that examines the relationship between health outcomes and when you eat your food. Early animal studies into chrononutrition focused on the deleterious health effects of late-night eating, but more recent research has focused on breakfast in particular. 

For instance, a 2013 study published in Obesity split 93 obese patients into two groups: those with a heavy breakfast, and those with a heavy dinner. Critically, both groups were given diets with identical calorie and macronutrient intake over the 12 weeks of the diet. Even though both groups lost weight, the group with the heavy breakfast lost more than twice as much weight as the dinner-heavy group.

Scientists still don't know the exact mechanisms triggering these effects, but there is undisputed science behind it. So, along with not getting enough sleep, go ahead and add skipping breakfast to the list of things that make you more likely to die early.