Growing up, you likely heard from parents, teachers, PSAs on TV, and darn near everywhere that breakfast is “the most important meal of the day.” In spite of that, many of us didn’t take that advice to heart and ended up skipping breakfast regularly due to time constraints or just not feeling hungry in the morning. However, a 2025 study found that skipping breakfast doesn’t just impact your hunger, but could impact your mental health.
Researchers from the Hong Kong Youth Epidemiological Study of Mental Health collected data from 3,154 participants aged 15 to 24 from 2019 through 2022, finding that those who skipped breakfast were more impulsive, anxious, and showed signs of depression more often than the participants who ate something every morning. While there are significant cultural differences of what kinds of foods and how much of them are eaten for breakfast, this study on mental health partners with physical health studies that say that eating something shortly after you wake up each morning is typically better than not having anything to eat at all.
@drchrislee Learned this the hard way #stressrelief
While 85% of the participants in the study ate breakfast daily or intermittently, the other 15% skipped it entirely. It was found that the participants who skipped breakfast showed more difficulty paying attention and practicing self-control along with displaying impulsive behavior. They also reported more severe symptoms of depression and high anxiety compared to the breakfast eaters. The breakfast skippers also reported being less productive, had poorer social functioning at events, and were less efficient at their jobs.
“Breakfast skipping is associated with elevated depressive symptoms in young people, with impaired attentional control being an important mechanism in this relationship,” said the study authors. “Encouraging young people to build regular breakfast habits may be incorporated as part of future lifestyle interventions for mental disorders and be further emphasized in public health policies.”
@feedyourmental #nutritionalpsychology #nutritionalpsychiatry #nutritionaltherapy #brainfood #viral #mentalhealth
Aside from the mental health benefits of breakfast are the physical ones. Breakfast tends to help people maintain a healthier weight by consuming less calories all at once later in the day. It also helps manage your blood sugar and metabolism more efficiently while experiencing less “brain fog” in the morning since you have fuel in your tank.
For those who don’t have time or don’t feel hungry to have breakfast, there are some tips to turn you into a convert. In terms of time, you can do some meal prep at the start of the week to make some nutritious grab-and-go meals, or make some healthy shakes or smoothies to quickly drink down. If you’re not hungry in the morning, you can eat smaller portions or shakes in order to just get your metabolism jumpstarted for the day ahead. That said, there are benefits to carving out 30 minutes to an hour each morning for quiet time that could include breakfast. Not only would you be fueling your body efficiently through food, you’ll also allow your mind and brain to ease into the day with better focus.
@holisticsofii This will drag you through any weather and mental health crisis I promise #morningroutinecheck #biohacking #morningboost #notamorningperson #morningritual
Based on this recent study and others that enforce the “most important meal of the day” label, it’s best for most people to incorporate some form of breakfast into their daily routine no matter how imperfect. Over time, it could turn into the best part of waking up.
Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
Gif of Robin Williams via 
A woman conducts a online color testCanva
A selection of color swatchesCanva
A young boy takes a color examCanva 
Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.