A top doctor says skipping breakfast may not be a bad thing if you want to lose weight.
Experts have often referred to it as the most important meal of the day but Dr Michael Mosley isn't as convinced.
Eating a balanced meal soon after you wake - such as porridge, eggs or muesli - stops you unnecessarily eating later in the day, research suggests.
But the medic, who regularly speaks out against what he sees as diet myths, says going without food first thing in the morning may not be that bad.
It comes after Dr Federica Amati, a nutrition scientist at health research company ZOE, said the blanket recommendation that everyone should eat breakfast "doesn't come from any specific scientific basis".
Posting on the Fast 800 Instagram account, Dr Mosley said: "We are often told that eating a good breakfast is a simple way to control your weight. If you skip breakfast, then you will get hungry later in the day and snack on high calorie junk food.
"Eating breakfast revs up your metabolism, preparing you for the day. It seems a plausible suggestion but is it true?"
"To test this idea researchers got 300 overweight volunteers and asked those who normally skip breakfast to eat breakfast, while those who routinely ate breakfast were asked to skip it. They weighed the volunteers beforehand and 16 weeks later.
"So what actually happened? Well, the breakfast skippers who had made themselves eat breakfast lost an average of 0.76kgs.
"While the breakfast eaters, who had spent 16 weeks skipping breakfast, lost an almost identical amount, an average of 0.71kgs."
Researchers concluded that the recommendation to eat breakfast "had no discernible effect on weight loss in free-living adults who were attempting to lose weight."
However, if you find that eating a healthy breakfast makes you less likely to have food cravings throughout the day, it is still recommended you eat breakfast.
Dr Mosley says he eats breakfast every day - but says it works for some to skip the first meal of the day.
Last year he hit the headlines by saying that exercising less, but more often, could help you shift some timber.
"The single reason most people cite for not exercising is lack of time," he wrote. "It certainly can be tricky to find the two and a half hours a week of moderately intense activity you need to meet the recommended guidelines.
"So why not try what I call 'exercise snacks'? An 'exercise snack' can last from 20 seconds to ten minutes and it doesn't matter what you do as long as you are elevating your heart rate and getting a bit warm. You could start your day, as I do, with a brisk ten to 15-minute walk.
"At midday you could jump on your bike (or exercise bike) and pedal hard, against resistance, for 20 seconds.
"This is known as HIIT, high-intensity interval training, and a couple of 20 second bursts can make a difference."
