We have long heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, especially for growing bodies and minds. A study from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has linked the belief that breakfast leads to better academic success with scientific evidence.
The research funded by the Australian Research Council and The Future Project at The King’s School studied 648 high school students from New South Wales. Findings showed that eating a healthy breakfast can lead to higher motivation and achievement for students.
To investigate the role of breakfast consumption and the quality of students’ self-reported science motivation and achievement through a science test, students were surveyed on what they had eaten that morning and what they usually eat to create a score for their breakfast habits based on dietary guidelines from the National Health and Medical Research Council. Researchers then tested the students’ motivation in science classes before they went on to complete a test based on the syllabus content.
“In the survey, we asked many questions about their background to help us control for various factors including socioeconomic status, gender, physical activity, previous achievement and conscientiousness to isolate the impact of breakfast on motivation and achievement,” says Scientia Professor Andrew Martin, lead author of the study and an educational psychologist from the School of Education at UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture. “We were also careful to time it right so we could better determine the process, with the breakfast in the morning preceding the levels of motivation and achievement we saw later that day.”
The research also found while breakfast predicted student motivation, it did not predict student achievement. Instead, motivation predicted achievement. The research showed that the students who ate a healthy, well-balanced breakfast were more motivated and achieved better scores on the tests.
“A healthy breakfast has traditionally been associated with improved academic performance, but the motivational factors implicated in this process have not been well understood,” says Professor Martin.
What we put into the breakfast counts; the research found that students who ate unhealthy breakfasts had similar results as those who didn’t eat breakfast at all. It also showed that the breakfast that day is what counts, students who had an unhealthy breakfast or none measured lower for motivation and scored lower on the test regardless of whether they usually ate a healthy breakfast or previously performed well.
“Eating a healthy breakfast every day is good for students’ motivation and achievement while skipping breakfast is not so good,” says Professor Martin. “Somewhat unexpectedly, eating an unhealthy breakfast could be as disruptive to motivation and achievement as not eating breakfast at all. Simply having breakfast isn’t enough to gain the full benefits of eating breakfast; quality is also important for optimal motivation.”
