Nearly 30 per cent of the Indian adolescents tend to skip breakfast, and the prevalence of this trend has been growing gradually over the year. Breakfast as the first meal of the day, has been studied for its influence on health issues, psychological impact, as well as day- to- day performance. Beyond simply satisfying hunger, breakfast has been shown to improve both, the health and the cognitive abilities, of individuals. The main aim of the present study was to find out the association of breakfast consumption patterns with Academic performance of adolescent girls. In the present study, 213 students were selected as the study subjects. Among these it was found that 27 per cent of the subjects were breakfast skippers, and 73 per cent of them were Regular breakfast eaters . Skipping Breakfast was shown to interfere with cognition, with a significant difference (p value 0.026) being observed when the cognitive abilities of regular breakfast eaters was compared to that of skippers. Also the varying pattern of mean memory capacities was found to be dipping vertically (66.40 to 61.77) among the regular breakfast eaters as compared to the skippers. Regular breakfast eaters (62.5 per cent) had a high average IQ level as compared to a much lower, 37.5 per cent skippers. 73.8 per cent college going girls who consume breakfast regularly follow a similar pattern of having normal/average IQ levels as compared to that of just 26.19 per cent breakfast skippers. Regular breakfast eaters hence, possess a clear advantage over skippers, when compared in terms of Academic performance and IQ levels. Skipping Breakfast has shown to interfere with cognition. Whopping 90 per cent regular eaters were found to have very good cognitive ability as compared to just 10 per cent skippers. Following a similar trend, 87.5 per cent regular breakfast eaters were analyzed to have good cognitive abilities when compared to skippers in this category (12.5%).

Keyword: Regular breakfast eaters; Breakfast skippers; Academic performance; IQ levels