Breakfast’s role in health

Re “The Breakfast Hype” [Sept. 18]: From the time I was a child, I disliked breakfast. I just wasn’t hungry until around 10 or 11 a.m. Then I read an article about people who lived over 100 years. Try as the researchers might, they could not find a thread to connect the people who lived to such a grand age even though studies previously had shown yogurt or fish to be beneficial. Then, they realized that the only thing all of them had in common was that they ate breakfast. I became a breakfast eater and was shocked that when I added that meal, I lost weight.

MARYLYN ENGLISH

Tarzana

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One of the issues your article on breakfast skirted that may explain why research on the role of breakfast (particularly in performance enhancement) is so inconclusive is that in the U.S., breakfast meals are often calorically dense but nutritionally empty. Because I share Susan Bowerman’s concern that the nutrients found in a healthful breakfast, if skipped, may not be made up later in the day, and because many people love the comfort foods associated with breakfast, I recommend following the advice in the very last line of the article: Eat breakfast for lunch.

SYDNE JENNIFER NEWBERRY

San Pedro

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Nothing was said about dinner’s role. If breakfast supplies energy for the day’s start, is dinner needed for sleeping? One does not add more fuel to one’s car (breakfast) when one’s tank is on full (dinner). No breakfast for me, my tank is full.

T.M. LUBISICH

Malibu