Children Who Eat Two Breakfasts May Be Healthier Than Those Who Eat None, Study Says

As it turns out, a child's metabolism works a little bit like a hobbit's. A new study published in the Pediatric Obesity Journal claims that schoolchildren who eat two breakfasts are less likely to be obese than children who sporadically eat breakfast, or skip it altogether.

Researchers tracked the diets and weights of 600 middle school students, and found that kids who indulged in two breakfasts were no more likely to gain weight than their solitary first meal companions. Meanwhile, the rate of obesity doubled for children who skipped breakfast every day.

"It seems it's a bigger problem to have kids skipping breakfast than to have these kids eating two breakfasts," Marlene Schwartz of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity and one of the study's authors, told NPR.

The study was inspired by real-world concerns that by offering free in-school breakfast to students, obesity rates could increase.

How can eating double the amount of calories in the morning be good for kids? Researchers claim that when children eat at school, they're getting healthy fare, "not doughnuts from Denny's."