Students with poor mental health more likely to skip breakfast daily

Key takeaways:

• Overall, 18% of students skipped breakfast every day.
• Students with high grades and those who felt close to people at school were less likely to skip breakfast.

High school students with poor mental health were more likely to skip breakfast every day than peers who did not report poor mental health symptoms, according to a study published in MMWR.

“Consistent with existing research, the findings in this report indicate that symptoms of poor mental health (ie, persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness) were associated with skipping breakfast every day,” Sarah A. Sliwa, PhD, a behavioral scientist in the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, and colleagues wrote. “Other research has linked regular breakfast intake with improvements in diet quality, which can help support mental health in children and adolescents.”

Sliwa and colleagues studied data from the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey on high school students’ breakfast habits, academic performance and mental well-being. They defined skipping breakfast as not eating breakfast on any of the previous 7 days.

Out of 20,103 students, 27.4% ate breakfast every day of the previous week, 51.8% ate breakfast 3 or fewer days and 17.9% did not eat breakfast any day, according to the study. More girls skipped breakfast every day than boys (19.7% vs. 16.2%), and skipping breakfast was more common among students who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or questioning compared with heterosexual students. More Hispanic students reported skipping breakfast than white students (20% vs. 16.2%).

The researchers found that students who reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness were 51% more likely to skip breakfast (adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR]= 1.51; 95% CI, 1.32-1.73). Girls were 64% more likely to skip breakfast (aPR = 1.64; 95% CI, 1.29–2.07) and boys were 37% more likely to skip breakfast (aPR = 1.37; 95% CI, 1.16–1.62) compared with their peers who did not report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.

Students who felt close to people at school were 27% less likely to skip breakfast every day (aPR = 0.73; 95% CI, 0.64-0.84), and students who had mostly A and B grades were 35% less likely to skip breakfast every day (aPR = 0.65; 95% CI, 0.56-0.75). Students who got high grades and identified as Black or Hispanic were not significantly less likely to skip breakfast.

“A novel finding from this study is that students with higher levels of school connectedness, a known protective factor against poor mental health and risky health behaviors, were less likely to skip breakfast,” Sliwa and colleagues wrote. “The relation between school connectedness and breakfast consumption, including the role of school breakfast programs, merits additional exploration through longitudinal designs that include grades 9 through 12.”