Name: Is breakfast the most important meal of the day? ⏲️ 6 Minute English
Uploaded: 2025-10-30T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 6 min 13 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Did you have any breakfast today Georgie or did you skip it?

I did have some breakfast on the way to the office.

I had a big bowl of porridge but it was at 6 o' clock this morning, so I'm hungry again now.

And you might soon be hungry as well because we're going to talk about breakfast.

Let's start by hearing from Professor Alexandra Johnston, a nutrition scientist who spoke to Ruth Alexander, host of BBC World Service programme the Food Chain.

I am supporting the meme breakfast like a king and dine like a pauper.

For you then, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

So it's really important, particularly for people who are trying to maintain a healthy weight and people who are trying to lose weight.

Alexandra says that you should breakfast like a king and dine like a pauper.

Pauper is an old-fashioned word for a very poor person.

The expression means have a big breakfast and a small dinner.

We're going to find out some of the reasons that Alexandra and other experts recommend doing this.

And as usual, we'll learn some useful new words and phrases.

And remember, you'll find all the vocabulary and a quiz on our website bbclearningenglish.com.

OK, but first, I have a question for you, Phil.

According to a recent survey, which of the following is the most popular breakfast in the uk?

Well, I think people like to keep it simple so I'm going to say toast.

Okay, well, we'll find out the answer later in the program.

Let's hear some reasons for why we should breakfast like a king or queen.

Courtney Peterson, who researches eating behaviours, explains how the time of day affects how our bodies process food on BBC World's service programme The Food Chain.

And so if you can eat a large breakfast in the morning and, or I would even say a large lunch in the morning,

your body's going to be better at metabolizing that food.

And what that means is your body's going to actually your blood sugar levels won't spike as high,

you might burn slightly more fat, you might burn slightly more calories from eating earlier in the day.

Whereas if you had, if you eat most of your food later in the day, your metabolism is actually slower later in the day.

So for instance, if you ate the same, I don't know, bowl of ice cream in the morning, the afternoon, in the evening,

your blood sugar levels will spike, spike significantly higher in the afternoon and evening.

This is a word that refers to the chemical processes in your body and we most often use it to talk about those that convert food into energy.

And we also heard the verb form, metabolize.

Courtney talked about blood sugar levels spiking.

If you see it on a line graph, it means that something has increased very rapidly.

We often use the noun spike to mean a sudden increase in a value that is being measured.

The verb spike means to suddenly increase.

We've heard that eating earlier in the day can be healthier for us.

Now, people often don't eat breakfast, sometimes because they don't have time, sometimes because they're trying to save money.

Let's hear again from Professor Alexandra Johnston talking to BBC World Service, The food chain.

Now, breakfast skipping is interesting because my own work would tend to suggest,

and that sort of observational, large-scale epidemiological studies would also support this, that people who have a regular breakfast are actually leaner.

And my own work would tend to suggest that having your largest meal of the day in the morning period gives you a much better appetite control,

which then means it's much easier control food intake later in the day.

Alexandra starts by mentioning breakfast skipping.

If you skip something then you don't do it bad.

Students might skip lessons, they don't go to them.

If you skip a meal it means that you don't eat it.

We also heard that people who have a regular breakfast are leaner.

If someone is lean, then they're not fat.

And one of the reasons given why people might be leaner is that they have better appetite control.

Appetite control is where your brain decides how much you should eat.

Now I think it's time that we heard the answer to your question.

Ok, I asked, according to a recent survey, what is the most popular breakfast in the UK?

but the most popular in the country as a whole was cereal.

And that's according to a survey by a cereal manufacturer.

Ok, let's recap the vocabulary we've learned, starting with pauper,

which is an old-fashioned word for a very poor person when we're talking about data.

Metabolism refers to the chemical processes inside your body, especially those which process food.

If you skip something, you miss it. You don't do it.

If someone is lean, then they are not fat.

And finally, appetite control is how your brain decides how much you should eat.

But why not head over to our website, bbclearningenglish.com to try the quiz and worksheet for this episode.