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Mark Wahlberg and Dr. Oz can't agree on whether breakfast is important

Mark Wahlberg is not on board with Dr. Oz's plan to "ban breakfast" in 2020.
/ Source: TODAY

Mark Wahlberg is definitely not part of Dr. Oz's #TeamNoBreakfast.

The actor was asked by TMZ if he agreed with Dr. Mehmet Oz's contention that breakfast is not an important meal.

Dr. Oz and Mark Wahlberg
Dr. Oz and Mark Wahlberg are at odds over the importance of breakfast. TODAY/ Getty Images

"Listen, I don't care what Dr. Oz says, I gotta have my breakfast before I work out,'' Wahlberg said. "That's my preference."

Oz, who believes in an intermittent fasting program, has made a resolution to skip breakfast this year.

"I think for 2020, the first thing I’m going to do is ban breakfast," the celebrity doctor recently told TMZ. "I don’t think we need to eat breakfast. That’s an advertising ploy.

"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."

Wahlberg begs to differ. His morning routine has become legendary, consisting of waking up at 2:30 a.m. and eating breakfast at 3:15 a.m. before he does his F45 Training workout. The 48-year-old actor, who is an investor in the F45 exercise franchise, is clearly doing something right given the pictures he has posted on Instagram of his shredded physique.

"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,'' Wahlberg told TMZ. "Tell Dr. Oz to come work out."

Oz heartily accepted that challenge.

"Mark, I heard you said that I was dead wrong when it comes to canceling breakfast,'' he said in a Twitter video. "Well, powerful medical literature and lots of athletes support me and show that intermittent fasting flips the metabolic switch so it bolsters your physical and your mental performance.

"I last ate 12 hours ago, but thankfully my liver, it stored lots of energy, plenty of energy for the intensity of workout that mere mortals like me do, but maybe for you, too. So swing by, and test that breakfast matters."

Breakfast has been a polarizing topic among experts, who argue whether it's the most important meal of the day or no big deal.

Dietitian Kristin Kirkpatrick, the manager of wellness nutrition services at the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute, wrote for TODAY that breakfast should be your largest meal of the day.

She cited a 2017 study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that followed female volunteers and found that those who skipped breakfast had a higher degree of hardening of the arteries, or atherosclerosis. Another study found that individuals who made breakfast the largest meal of the day were more likely to lose weight than those who made lunch or dinner their largest meals.

However, a 2015 study by researchers at Columbia University found that out of people who ate oatmeal for breakfast, Frosted Flakes for breakfast, and no breakfast at all, overweight people who skipped breakfast were the only group that lost weight.