That,
from researchers who reported this week at the American Heart Association's
annual conference. In their study, researchers found that obesity and insulin
resistance syndrome rates were 35 per cent to 50 per cent lower among people who
ate breakfast every day compared to those who frequently skipped it.
"Our results suggest that breakfast may really
be the most important meal of the day," said Dr Mark A. Pereira, a research
associate at Children's Hospital in Boston and assistant professor at Harvard
Medical School. "It appears that breakfast may play an important role in
reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease." Pereira
said that eating breakfast might have beneficial effects on appetite, insulin
resistance and energy metabolism. "Just the habit of filling your belly in
the morning might help people control their hunger throughout the day so they
might be less likely to overeat in the morning or at lunch," he said.
"Or, there might be a hormonal basis for some
of the effects because the hormone insulin controls blood sugar and blood sugar
level is related to how hungry or energetic a person feels."
Insulin resistance syndrome is a metabolic
disorder characterized by the combination of several factors such as obesity,
high abdominal body fat, high blood pressure, and high fasting levels of blood
sugar or the hormone insulin, which helps the body store glucose properly.
The syndrome also often includes problems in
blood fat metabolism such as high levels of triglycerides and low levels of
high-density lipoprotein (HDL - the ‘good’ cholesterol). Although people with
insulin resistance syndrome may not yet have diabetes, their bodies do not use
glucose efficiently and those with the condition are at greater risk of
developing type 2 diabetes as well as heart disease.
The risk reduction for obesity and insulin
resistance was consistent for white men and women and for black men but not for
black women, a difference the researchers are continuing to study, Pereira said.
Overall, about 47 per cent of the whites and 22
per cent of the blacks reported daily breakfast consumption. "Dietary
patterns are known to differ widely, probably due to cultural differences, by
race and ethnicity and even between men and women," he said.
The subjects included 1,198 black and 1,633 white
participants of the CARDIA study, which studied young adults in the US
communities of Minneapolis, Oakland in California, Chicago and Birmingham. They
assessed breakfast habits and risk factors for heart disease over an eight-year
period (1992-2000) for participants aged 25-37 in 1992. The study results
accounted for risk factors such as smoking, low physical activity, alcohol use
and demographic factors.
This large, prospective study of young adults
from two different racial groups makes a unique contribution to the literature,
Pereira said, yet it is limited because researchers cannot determine cause and
effect from a self-reporting study.
"We need to do more research," said the scientist. "We have started looking at what people are eating when they eat breakfast, which led to our finding that eating wholegrain cereal each day was associated with a 15 per cent reduction in risk for the insulin resistance syndrome."
Source: Diabetes In Control Dot Com.
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