@article{Alhilabi_Payne_2018, title={The Impact of Skipping Breakfast on the Body Weight of Children and Young People in Saudi Arabia; A Systematic Review}, volume={3}, url={https://knepublishing.com/index.php/AJNE/article/view/3588}, DOI={10.18502/ajne.v3i3.3588}, abstractNote={<p><strong>Aim:</strong>&nbsp;To review evidence on the impact of skipping breakfast on the body weight of children and young people of Saudi Arabia.</p> <p><strong>Method:</strong>&nbsp;A systematic search of&nbsp;the&nbsp;Cochrane Library, EBSCO (AMED, MEDLINE, and CINAHL), Web of Science, SCOPUS, PubMed, and EMBASE was conducted in March 2018 to identify primary&nbsp;published&nbsp;research. Additional studies were identified by hand searching in other sources such as subject-specific journals and grey literature. Any observational study, published in&nbsp;the&nbsp;English language in the last 20 years (1998-2018), involving healthy&nbsp;children and/or young people (5-24 years) in Saudi Arabia&nbsp;was included&nbsp;and the effect of skipping breakfast on their body weight&nbsp;was evaluated. Pre-defined information&nbsp;was extracted from each study onto&nbsp;a data extraction form&nbsp;for evaluation, following the Cochrane method for undertaking a systematic review. Study quality was evaluated using a Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies.</p> <p><strong>&nbsp;</strong><strong>Results:</strong>&nbsp;Eight studies met the inclusion criteria, of which seven graded weak in quality assessment, while one paper scored moderate.&nbsp;Six studies show&nbsp;that regular breakfast consumption has a protective effect against overweight/obesity, of which three studies tested&nbsp;the correlation,&nbsp;while&nbsp;controlling for confounding&nbsp;variables. Two&nbsp;of the eight studies demonstrated no significant correlation. Breakfast intake was&nbsp;also&nbsp;found to have&nbsp;a positive association with student’s academic performance, with two out of&nbsp;three trials&nbsp;demonstrating a significant relationship, but in linking regular breakfast habit with socioeconomic status, no effect was found.</p> <p><strong>Conclusion:&nbsp;</strong>The findings suggest that&nbsp;skipping breakfast is associated with a higher risk of overweight and obesity&nbsp;in children and adolescents in Saudi Arabia&nbsp;and thus&nbsp;breakfast consumption is associated with&nbsp;a reduced risk of overweight and&nbsp;obesity. However, in view of the array of methods used to define breakfast skipping&nbsp;and overweight/obesity,&nbsp;as well as&nbsp;the&nbsp;less robust nature of observational studies&nbsp;we cannot&nbsp;conclusively assume this&nbsp;relationship, suggesting further more controlled studies&nbsp;are required.</p> <p><strong>Key words: </strong>Obesity, overweight, breakfast, breakfast skipping, children, young people, Saudi Arabia.</p&gt;}, number={3}, journal={Arab Journal of Nutrition and Exercise (AJNE)}, author={Alhilabi, Hanan Saleem and Payne, Anne}, year={2018}, month={Dec.}, pages={67–104} }