Breakfast skipping is related to inadequacy of vitamin and mineral intakesamong Japanese female junior high school students: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Breakfast skipping is a public health issue which affects nutrient intake among adolescents worldwide. However, there have been few reports comparingintake and reference values to assess the deficiency of nutrient intake between breakfast consumers and skippers. Therefore, the present study aimed toexamine the relationship between breakfast skipping and adequacy of total habitual nutrient intake among junior high school female students. The parti-cipants were 516 Japanese female junior high school students. Dietary habits during the preceding month were assessed using a brief self-administered diethistory questionnaire. Inadequacy of each nutrient intake was assessed by the cut-point method, based on the estimated average requirement for fourteennutrients and on dietary goal values forfive nutrients. The overall nutritional inadequacy in participants was assessed by the number of consumed nutrientswhich did not meet the requirements as per the dietary reference intakes for Japanese, 2015 version. The participants were classified into two groupsaccording to the frequency of breakfast eating: breakfast consumers (seven times/week) and breakfast skippers (0–6 times/week). Adequacy of vitaminA, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin C, Ca, Fe, Zn and K was higher among breakfast consumers than among skippers. Breakfast consumers had moreintakes of fruits, vegetables and dairy products. Ourfindings suggest that breakfast skipping was related to deficiencies in vitamin and mineral intakes,and to an unfavourable dietary pattern, among Japanese female junior high school students.