Breakfast Skippers 2cb12

Acknowledgements: I would first and foremost like to thank my mother for her essential aid and in the completion of this project. Thank you to my brother, who took me on this project at the last moment. I also owe enormous thanks to my friend without whom my analyses would remain incomplete. Additionally, thanks are due to my neighbors who fully ed this research and made my project complete. Special thanks go to my math teacher who gave me this wonderful opportunity.

Overview: This Project examines the prevalence of breakfast skipping among adolescents and young adults and the relationship between varying definitions of breakfast skipping and disordered eating, obesity, and depression. Then my study investigates the differences between breakfast skippers and breakfast consumers.

Objective: I have always heard of people who say “I Have Skipped My Morning Breakfast”. I wondered how many of them skipped their breakfast every day. Breakfast skippers were the people who missed their breakfast at least once in the week. So I took upon the topic of Breakfast Skippers as my topic for the math project and decided to work upon it.

Method: 1. First I chose the overall population to be surveyed which was approximately 50 people from my neighborhood. 2. Then I decided that I would meet people personally rather than telephone surveys because telephone surveys can easily be biased. 3. After that I prepared a questionnaire. Questionnaire is a set of questions which I will be asking the people. My questionnaire is given below: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

Do you skip your morning breakfast? If yes, how often do you skip your breakfast? What is your age? What is your occupation? Why do you skip your breakfast?

4. After preparing the questionnaire I went around my colony taking the required data I needed. I tallied the number of people who skip their breakfast and other additional details. 5. Then I edited and processed the data. I ed the data table on the computer and converted it into a bar graph and pie graphs. 6. Finally I analyzed the collected data using graphs and came up with my conclusion.

Data: I totally surveyed 53 people which consist of 24 males and 29 females. Out of these 53 people 22 of them skipped their breakfast at least once in a week, which is approximately 42%.

Comparison No.of People Who Eat Brakfast

No.Of People Who Skip Breakfast

42% 58%

I collected some more additional information from the people who skipped their breakfast. After gathering the details, I sorted the breakfast skippers by the factor “How Often They Skip Breakfast” and got the following table:

How Often Do they Skip Breakfast 6-7 Days A week 3-5 Days A week 1-2 Days a week

No.Of People 4 8 10

How Often Do they Skip Breakfast? 10 9 8 7 6 No.Of People

5 4 3 2 1 0 6-7 Days A week

3-5 Days A week

1-2 Days a week

Then I organized the breakfast skippers according to their age group to get a better picture. Age Group 10Yrs19Yrs 20Yrs29Yrs 30Yrs39Yrs 40Yrs49Yrs 50Yrs59Yrs 60Yrs+

Total No. Of People 8 5 5 3 1 0

Breakfast Skippers 8 7 6 5 4 Total No.of People

3 2 1 0

Age Group 10Yrs19Yrs 20Yrs29Yrs 30Yrs39Yrs 40Yrs49Yrs 50Yrs59Yrs 60Yrs+

Male Female 3

5

3

2

2

3

1

2

0 0

1 0

Breakfast Skippers By Gender 5

4

3 Male Female 2

1

0 10Yrs-19Yrs

20Yrs-29Yrs

30Yrs-39Yrs

40Yrs-49Yrs

50Yrs-59Yrs

60Yrs+

Analysis: According to me, breakfast skipping has significantly increased among young people over the past years. 42% of the people skipped their breakfasts from my survey. This shows that the lifestyle of the people has changed. In the past people used to leave their homes late and thus had plenty of time to eat a satisfying breakfast. But in today’s scenario people start their day in a hurry burry and hence cannot allocate time even for their breakfast. Why do people choose to skip breakfast? From the answers I got from questioning my neighbors I identified several reasons for breakfast skipping. Mostly people skipped breakfast due to environmental factors associated with breakfast consumption. Common reasons to skip breakfast given by adolescents were lack of time, lack of hunger, and dieting to lose weight. Students and adolescents experience lack of time due to the fact that these days schools are operating early and ending late. As a result parents are unable to prepare both breakfast and lunch for their children. So even the students opt to skip breakfast to save time and go to their schools early. Further I could analyze that the workers who work night shifts tend to skip their breakfast as they feel tired working the whole night. Some of them who skipped breakfast one or two days in a week that is during weekends only. Also I could see that children and adolescents are more likely to skip breakfast than adults. Breakfast skipping is more prevalent in girls than boys (59%of the females skip breakfast). Adult female mothers skipped breakfast often as they complained that by the time they send their children to school and husbands to work and finish their house work it becomes late and hence eat their lunch directly after some time. Unfortunately I couldn’t interview older citizens as there were no senior citizens in my neighborhood. Eating breakfast is most common among older citizens because they’re more apt to have the time. The one citizen above the age of 50 skipped breakfast only due to the fact that digestion is happening very slowly for her.

Conclusion: From this project I understand that about 18% of people I surveyed skip their breakfast at least 1 day in a week. But in reality skipping breakfast is not good for our health. Breakfast actually means breaking our fast since last dinner. So breakfast is absolutely necessary for a person of any age group even for a person who is in diet. Breakfast has always been said to be the most important meal of the day. But researchers say it could be even more crucial than previously thought, with those who skip the breakfast more likely to have an unhealthy lifestyle. Missing breakfast can be seen as a way of saving time in the morning, or of losing weight. And those who missed the breakfast were likely to be fatter, possibly because they are more likely to have unhealthy snacks mid-morning to boost their energy levels.

However skipping breakfast once in awhile doesn’t harm your health. So please consume your breakfast for a healthier lifestyle.