Contrary to what we've been told for years that breakfast is an essential start to our day, we should all just ban it outright and make brunch a daily event, says Dr. Mehmet Öz.

Before you brand him a madman, hear him out – when was the last time you actually ate breakfast because you were hungry?

Calling breakfast an "advertising ploy" during an interview with celebrity news website TMZ, Öz said: "A lot of the dogma that we have been fed for decades comes from advertising."

"It wasn't really based on facts about our health," he said. "The smartest thing for us to do is cancel breakfast and have your first meal when you're actually hungry."

Öz's advice comes amid a growing trend in dieting around intermittent fasting in which practitioners abstain from eating for a period of time each day, usually between 14 to 16 hours. Other methods include abstaining from food altogether or keeping intake to just a few hundred calories, for two days per week.

If people feel hungry when they wake up in the morning, it is likely due to food withdrawal, Öz said.

"Because you had some simple carbohydrate like a potato chip or French fries at 10 at night, that means your body's insulin is all whacked up," he said. "By the next morning that withdrawal is happening, you're starving like a drug addict. You got to get your meds."