Adolescents who don't eat breakfast properly are more likely to display metabolic syndrome as adults compared to those who eat a healthy breakfast daily, a new study finds.
Time and again, health experts emphasize on the importance of breakfast. In fact, some also call it the most important meal of the day. While this remains a debatable topic, Umeå University researchers support claims that breakfast indeed is very important.
Researchers conducted a study wherein they asked a group of students (number not specified) who completed year 9 of their schooling in Luleå in 1981 about their breakfast habits. Twenty seven years later, the respondents underwent a health check where the presence of metabolic syndrome and its various subcomponents was investigated. Researchers noted that adolescents who ate poor breakfasts displayed a higher incidence of metabolic syndrome compared to those who ate healthy breakfasts.
Metabolic syndrome is a collective term used to describe increased risk of suffering from cardiovascular disorders. It included abdominal obesity, high levels of harmful triglycerides, low levels of protective HDL (High Density Lipoprotein), high blood pressure and high fasting blood glucose levels.
Researchers of the study noted that adolescents who ate poor breakfasts were at a 68 percent higher risk of displaying metabolic syndrome as adults.
Researchers of the current study too aren't sure about the mechanism that connects a poor breakfast to increased risk of metabolic syndrome.
"Further studies are required for us to be able to understand the mechanisms involved in the connection between poor breakfast and metabolic syndrome, but our results and those of several previous studies suggest that a poor breakfast can have a negative effect on blood sugar regulation," said Maria Wennberg, the study's main author.
The study was supported by Family Medicine Unit and published in the journal Public Health Nutrition.
