A very small Israeli study, involving eight men and 10 women aged 30-70 with type 2 diabetes, has found that a big breakfast and a small dinner helped control blood sugar levels through the day.
Patients were randomly assigned to follow either a “B diet”, in which breakfast contained 2946 kilojoules, lunch 2523 kj, and dinner 858kj, or a “D diet”, which involved a 858 kj breakfast, 2523 kj lunch, and 2946 kj dinner. In other words, the same total amount of calories, in the same foods, was eaten by both groups, and lunch was the same for both, but the 'breakfast' and 'dinner' meals swapped timing.
After six days on the diet, patients ate their meals on the 7th day at the lab, where glucose levels were repeatedly tested during the day. After a break of two weeks, each patient was put on the alternate diet, and the same procedure was followed.
It was found that blood glucose levels rose 23% less after the lunch preceded by a large breakfast.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-03/afot-abo031615.php
Jakubowicz, D., Wainstein, J., Ahrén, B., Bar-Dayan, Y., Landau, Z., Rabinovitz, H. R., & Froy, O. (2015). High-energy breakfast with low-energy dinner decreases overall daily hyperglycaemia in type 2 diabetic patients: a randomised clinical trial. Diabetologia, 58(5), 912–919. http://doi.org/10.1007/s00125-015-3524-9