A recent national poll of around 1,500 people has shown that those who skipped breakfast in their early teens first had sexual intercourse at an average age of 17.5 years, nearly two years earlier than those who ate breakfast every day, according to a health ministry study panel.

Among all those polled, the average age of first sexual intercourse was 19.

Conducted in September, the poll asked people aged 16-49 to fill in questionnaires about the age at which they first had sex and their lifestyles when they were in junior high school — in seventh through ninth grades.

Kunio Kitamura, the researcher in charge of the poll for the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, said, "While it is important to delay sexual activities in order to reduce unwanted pregnancies among young people, the results suggest the family plays a major role for that (delay) to happen."

Kitamura, director of the Japan Family Planning Association, said of the breakfast-sex correlation, "An appropriately regulated lifestyle may be making some people prudent about sexual activities."

Those who said they do not have happy memories of family life or those who expressed feelings of hatred toward their mothers also had a tendency to first have sex early.