Breakfast timing & risk of T2D – Zoë Harcombe
Executive summary
* A study generated headlines about the relationship between the incidence of type 2 diabetes (T2D) and intermittent fasting/skipping breakfast. It wasn’t about intermittent fasting or skipping breakfast. It was about the timing of breakfast.
* The paper used data from the French population NutriNet-Santé study for over 100,000 people followed up for over 7 years. It placed these people into three groups according to breakfast timing – before 8am, 8am-9am or after 9am.
* During this time, almost 1,000 diagnoses of T2D were reported. The paper claimed that people in the after 9am breakfast group had a 59% higher incidence of T2D. (This was relative risk. As usual, the absolute difference was tiny).
* The paper included raw data, and these showed the opposite finding – those in the later breakfast group had a lower incidence of T2D.
