It’s a breakfast battle! While the old adage says that breakfast is the “most important meal of the day,” not everyone agrees. In fact, Dr. Mehmet Oz recently said he believes it’s time to cancel the morning meal.
“I think for 2020, the first thing I’m going to do is ban breakfast,” the celebrity doctor, 59, recently told TMZ. “I don’t think we need to eat breakfast. That’s an advertising ploy.”
The Dr. Oz Show host, who is a fan of intermittent fasting, then added: ”Unfortunately, a lot of the dogma that we were fed for decades came out of advertisements. It wasn’t really based on the truth around our health.”
But one star who definitely isn’t Team Ban Breakfast is Mark Wahlberg, who famously works out each morning at 2:30 a.m. and follows his gym session with breakfast before yet another training session involving an F45 workout. The Massachusetts native, 48, is an investor in the fitness franchise.
“I know a lot of people do a lot of intermittent fasting and stuff like that, but you know what you do? You go to F45 and get that 45-minute workout better than any workout out there, and you start getting in shape,” the Daddy’s Home star told the outlet on January 11. “Tell Dr. Oz to come work out.”
The medical professional heartily accepted Wahlberg’s challenge on Twitter shortly thereafter, telling the actor to “bring it on,” and even upped the ante on Monday, January 14.
“I reached out to Mark,” he told TMZ, adding that wanted to workout with the Deepwater Horizon star and have a “little discussion” about their breakfast differences. “People who intermittent fast and basically skip breakfast live longer,” the doc argued, noting that intermittent fasters also have better endurance.
In Oz’s mind, the only way to settle this heated dispute is with a one-legged push-up contest. “I think the endurance benefits of fasting in the morning are great enough that I can do 20 one-legged push-ups without struggling. I’ll see if Mark can as well,” he said as he played out the terms of his challenge.
The Food Can Fix It author added of his breakfast-loving competitor: “Stud that he is, I’m hoping he can come through on this, but if he’s got a full stomach we’ll see.”
Intermittent fasting isn’t the only diet and fitness trend Dr. Oz supports. As he told Us Weekly at the System 20 Fitness event in New York City on January 9, he’s also a proponent of the all plant-based menus that were recently served at the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Awards, respectively.
“I’m proud of them,” he said of the Globes, which went completely vegan for the first time ever earlier this month. “You can talk about making the world a better place, but the single most important thing all of us can do to make the world better and improve our health is the lean green. You don’t have to stop eating meat completely, but it should not be the main part of anyone’s diet. The Golden Globes took an appropriate stance.”
In fact, Oz was so moved by the Globes’ choice that he decided to make his own upcoming benefit completely vegan as well. “Every time I go to an awards show or to any kind of banquet, they put a big slab of meat on my table. I don’t eat meat and my wife who is a vegetarian, and many people at the table are vegetarians. We just get the side versions. But you know what? I have a Health Corps Gala coming up. I’m going to make it vegan,” he proclaimed. “That’s what we’re going to do. You just gave me the idea. Please take credit! Seriously, It’s like 600 people who are going to come. We’re going to raise a couple million bucks. Why not make it healthy. I’m going to make it a vegetarian gala.”
With reporting by Lexi Ciccone
