Skipping Breakfast and Subsequent Overweight/Obesity in Children: A Nationwide Prospective Study of 2.5-to 13-year-old Children in Japan

Background: Few longitudinal studies have examined the association between skipping breakfast and overweight/obesity in pre-elementary school children. Furthermore, this association may differ between boys and girls. The main objective of this study was to assess whether skipping breakfast in early childhood was associated with later incidence of overweight/obesity, with stratification by gender, using data on children aged 2.5 to 13 years old in The Longitudinal Survey of Newborns in the 21st century. Methods: We examined the associations between skipping breakfast at 2.5 years old and overweight/obesity at 2.5 (n = 34,649), 4.5 (n = 35,472), 7 (n = 31,266), 10 (n = 31,211), and 13 (n = 28,772) years old. To estimate adjusted odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of overweight/obesity by each age (2.5, 4.5, 7, 10, and 13 years), a multivariate logistic regression was used adjusting for time-invariant and time-varying covariates. Results: At the age of 2.5 years, 11.0% of boys and 12.2% of girls were skipping breakfast. In fully adjusted models, skipping breakfast at 2.5 years old was not significantly associated with overweight/obesity at 2.5 and 4.5 years old, but was significantly associated with overweight/obesity at 7 and 10 years old, in both sexes. Skipping breakfast at 2.5 years old was significantly associated with overweight/obesity at 13 years old in boys (OR 1.38; 95% CI, 1.17-1.62), but not in girls (OR 1.21; 95% CI, 0.98-1.49). Conclusions: Skipping breakfast in early childhood increased overweight/obesity in later childhood, but there may be gender differences in the association.