In this report
Overview

What Americans eat for breakfast

Last reviewed: November 2011
November 2011 issue cover This article appeared in
November 2011 Consumer Reports Magazine.
Image of a cut-up apple
 

We asked 1,234 U.S. residents 21 and older what they ate for breakfast on one weekday morning. (They could name any of more than two dozen options.) Here's what we found:

  • Twenty-two percent had skipped breakfast.
  • Older respondents were more likely to have eaten breakfast (93 percent of people 75 or older; 72 percent of those younger than 30).
  • People whose breakfast came from home were more likely to have a lower body mass index (under 25) than those who had eaten food from elsewhere.
  • Men were more likely than women to have eaten breakfast meat; women were more likely than men to have eaten yogurt.

Some specifics about the breakfast eaters:

American breakfasts by the numbers

These findings are from a nationally representative telephone poll conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center from Nov. 8-10, 2010, using random digit dialing.