The students of middle school students who take breakfast at school, even after eating breakfast at home, have less chances of becoming overweight or obese in comparison to students who don’t eat breakfast at all.

The results have added to the going on debate on policy efforts to boost the number of children who get daily school breakfasts. Earlier research had shown that food consumption in the morning is linked to enhanced academic performance, improved health, and healthy body weight for children.

However, there has been a fear that a second breakfast at school after eating breakfast at home may increase the child’s vulnerability to unhealthy weight gain. In fact, breakfast packed with proteins helps teenagers cut calories.

Jeannette Ickovics, a professor at the Yale University School of Public Health, said that their study hasn’t backed such concerns. Ickovics added that giving a healthy breakfast to students at school is helpful in decreasing food insecurity and is linked to students maintaining an appropriate weight.

The study appeared in journal Pediatric Obesity, included 584 middle school students, who belonged to 12 schools of an urban school district where students are given free breakfast and lunch.

Researchers tracked down the breakfast-eating locations and patterns of the students, and their weight over a span of two years form 5th grade in 2011-2012 to 7th grade in 2013-2014.

They get to know two things. Firstly, they noted that students who skipped or ate breakfast irregularly have over double risks of being overweight or obese in comparison to students who consumed double breakfasts.

The changes in the weight of students from 5th to 7th grade, who ate double breakfasts weren’t any different than the weight changes measured for the rest of the students.

Marlene Schwartz, a study author and director of the Rudd Center, said, “When it comes to the relationship between school breakfast and body weight, our study suggests that two breakfasts are better than none”.