I haven't eaten breakfast in ages (I'm a woman :D). I have a long black with a dash of cream first thing and then usually eat my first meal around 1300.
Sometimes, if I get caught out of the house without suitable food, I'll wait until dinner to eat. I'm pretty hungry by then, but it hasn't killed me yet.
Sorry, I don't have any portable breakfast ideas, but I haven't needed to think of any!

Another great blogpost! I don't think you left any rock unturned. For me breakfast is just a habit, one that I need to break.

As I have a lot of personal experience in this (sad, but true), I've often thought that the reason obese folks statistically were more likely to skip breakfast is because we/they just weren't hungry for it ... largely of later night eating patterns.

There are folks, like Tim Ferriss, who promote eating within a half-hour of waking to try and beat that early AM cortisol shot. Me, I don't think it's necessary to try and counteract millions of years of evolution ;).

[...] The Breakfast Myth, Part 2. [...]

You take on an important topic for sure. Typical breakfasts are a nightmare, but I question the validity of the studies you provided. What is the value of the research on diabetics or the research on daily energy intake if the studies used subjects who ate a standard diet before the study and who ate carbs for breakfast during the study? How do we know that a high fat, zero carb breakfast isn't actually optimal? We don't if there haven't been any studies on that. Definitely, there is value in skipping a high carb breakfast, but this says nothing about skipping a low carb, high fat breakfast.

"And that’s why modern “breakfast food” is snacks and sugary junk: it’s all we can force ourselves to eat when we’re not hungry."

I don't think this makes much sense. I, and probably half the paleo community, have no problem eating bacon and eggs upon rising. I don't personally get hungry before about 9 or 10, waking up around 5 or 6, but I eat because my family wants to eat. We all eat the same thing - bacon and eggs. We don't eat carbs in the morning and we all eat our breakfast voraciously and with immense pleasure.

Tremendous post as usual. J., you da gnoll.

I've been a big fan of fasting for a while now. For most of the past year, I fasted until dinner 5-6 days out of the week. Once your body gets used to it, it's terribly convenient and energy levels just keep going up until you break the fast in the late afternoon/early evening. Upon breaking the fast, I experienced the truth that hunger is the best sauce. Those who eat when they're not really hungry are missing out on the full gastronomical experience.

Just lately I've started weightlifting, and so I eat lunch on those days. Since I work in an office, time is in short supply, so I usually go for the following:

Sardines
Raw broccoli
Whey concentrate shake with raw eggs, raw cow's-milk kefir, cinnamon, and berries

Sardines are an outstanding choice for a convenient and quick lunch. The taste might be a little unusual at first, but it's easy to get used to. Get them with the skin and bones intact, and you're getting not just a clean protein source, but also plenty of calcium, significant amounts of vitamins B12 and D, and one of the most concentrated sources of EPA and DHA available. All at a bargain price, and in a convenient tin which can be stored for over a year. I can take in 60-80g of protein in one meal from sardines alone. They go well with broccoli.

As for the shake, generally I try to chew my nutrients, not drink them. So the whey shake is a bit of a compromise for convenience, and I drink it only after half-filling my belly with sardines and broccoli, slowing absorption somewhat.

@ Franco: Modern women's eating habits have nothing to do with their Paleolithic ancestresses' snacking while gathering berries.

Women in Western societies eat smaller, more frequent meals because they are bombarded by diet and weight loss advice from childhood. Women--to a degree that men have a very hard time imagining--are raised with the constant admonishment against getting fat, because to be a fatgirl is to be worthless and unloveable. This is nothing new; I was put on my first diet at the age of nine, way back in 1976, and was constantly on- and off weight-loss diets for the next thirty years. My mother, born in the early '40s, has had a similar experience. And all the women around us did--and continue to do--the exact same thing.

Most diet and weight-loss advice from experts is packaged and sold first to women. It's on daytime television shows, in women's magazines, and in any other media targeted toward women. If you're female, you can't avoid it--it's everywhere. Watch TV or flip through a magazine and pay attention to exactly what kind of people are featured in ads for low-fat, "lite," calorie-reduced, "diet" foods. If you do, you'll very soon realize that they are almost all female.

Since the prevailing diet/weight loss wisdom has been to eat restricted calories, low fat, and high carbs, women often eat many small, light meals to stave off hunger as best they can. This isn't how they want to eat; it isn't how they have evolved to eat after millennia of berry-picking; it's how they eat in order to cope with culturally-mandated chronically elevated insulin, semi-starvation, and malnourishment.

Certain foods are perceived as "feminine" because they are the foods women are allowed to eat to while on diets, so women eat more of them. However tasty they may be, they aren't very satisfying or nutritious on their own, and the few that are are only eaten in small amounts (tuna, skinless chicken). Women eating small meals, primarily composed of plant matter, is a cultural construction--not something women have somehow evolved to do separately from men.

As for the "women (as a massive, undifferentiated group) don't like rare/blue/bloody meat" claim, I don't know where you're getting that from. Well-done meat may be a preference among the women you know, but it is by no means universal. If women do tend to order their steaks cooked medium- to well, it is more likely due to fears of e. coli or foodborne illness than a genuine preference for overcoooked meat. Women tend to be far more aware of these hazards since they still do most of the cooking, as well as looking after their kids, so they are more likely to minimize risk to themselves and family members by overcooking meat.

I have been skipping breakfast for the past several months and it has been amazing. I don't really feel any different, but I do find it easier to eat my target number of calories and it saves me a lot of time. I can wake up and be out the door in less than 15 minutes, sometimes 10. All I do is wake up, jump in the show, dress, and head out the door. No need to sit around waiting for breakfast to cook.