Breakfast important
Breakfast eaters tend to have better diets overall, consuming more fruit, vegetables, milk and whole grains than non-breakfast eaters, according to Consumer Reports.
And because the time between dinner and the next morning’s meal is the longest your body goes without food, breakfast has an effect on you that’s different from any other meal. Eating within two hours of waking can make a difference in the way you metabolize glucose, or blood sugar, all day. Your glucose level rises every time you eat, and your pancreas produces insulin to shuttle the glucose into your cells, where it’s used for energy.
Consumer Reports provides five good reasons to eat in the morning:
1. It may protect your heart. In a recent study that involved almost 27,000 men, researchers found that those who didn’t eat a morning meal were 27 percent more likely to develop heart disease than those who did. “Our research indicates that people who skip breakfast gain weight, which can lead to diabetes as well as high cholesterol and blood pressure -- all of which can raise your risk of heart disease,” notes Dr. Eric Rimm, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
2. It might lower your risk of Type 2 diabetes. A morning meal may help you avoid fluctuating glucose levels, which can lead to diabetes. A study of almost 30,000 men found that not eating breakfast raised the risk by 21 percent, even after taking into account their body mass, what they ate and other factors. In a study of women, those under age 65 who skipped breakfast even just a few times per week were 28 percent more likely to develop diabetes than women who ate it regularly. And if you’re in the habit of dashing out in the morning with only a cup of coffee, Consumer Reports suggests taking note: Women in the study who worked full-time had a greater risk than those who worked part-time, researchers noted, possibly because job stress has been found to raise glucose levels.
3. It gets you moving. In a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN), people who ate breakfast were more physically active during the morning than those who didn’t. That might be because a temporary increase in blood sugar gave them more energy. It’s interesting to note that those who ate a morning meal consumed more calories over the course of the day than the breakfast skippers -- but they didn’t gain weight because they were more active.
4. It might give you a mental edge. Research involving adults and children has indicated that breakfast might enhance memory, attention, the speed of processing information, reasoning, creativity, learning and verbal abilities. Scientists at the University of Milan in Italy reviewed 15 studies and found some evidence that those benefits might be a function of the stable glucose levels that a morning meal provides.
5. It just might keep your weight down. Although more than 100 studies have linked eating breakfast with a reduced risk of obesity, researchers point out that those studies are merely observational and thus don’t prove that the meal keeps you from gaining weight. More solid evidence comes from randomized controlled trials.