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Eating a healthy, balanced breakfast can help with weight loss.
Eating a balanced breakfast has been linked to better weight loss and health markers by scientists examining the diets of hundreds of older adults in Spain.
Researchers who followed 383 adults aged 55 to 75 with obesity and metabolic syndrome found that those who ate a large breakfast or skipped breakfast altogether had higher levels of obesity.
What is the metabolic syndrome?
Metabolic syndrome is a medical term for a cluster of factors that put you at greater risk for certain chronic diseases. These factors include obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high levels of fatty compounds called lipids in the bloodstream.
Metabolic syndrome is related to insulin resistance and can damage blood vessels. But scientists don’t know exactly how it works or what causes it.
Eating A Mediterranean Breakfast
Scientists monitored the diets of 383 adults to find out more about the impact of breakfast on body mass index, which is calculated based on a person’s height and weight.
Adults with a BMI of 30 or higher are considered obese, while adults with a BMI between 25 and 30 are considered overweight. In the US, more than 40% of adults aged 20 or older are obese, while another 34% are overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Excess body mass is linked to a host of serious health problems, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers and stroke.
All study participants had been advised to follow a ‘Mediterranean’ diet as part of a larger research project. This means eating lots of vegetables and whole grain products. Scientists only observed what they ate and did not actively intervene.
Scientists measured how many calories participants ate for breakfast at various points during the three-year study, as well as health data such as BMI and waist circumference. They also checked the quality of breakfast food eaten, based on nutrients such as protein, fat, fiber and carbohydrates.
Good breakfast, better health stats
Participants who ate a large breakfast or did not eat breakfast at all had a 2 to 3.5% higher BMI than those who ate a moderate breakfast. For men, that meant eating 500-750 calories. for women this was 400 to 600 calories. That makes up about 20 to 30% of an adult’s total daily recommended calories.
For reference, a bowl of unsweetened cereal with low-fat cow’s milk contains about 210 calories, while a banana contains about 90 calories. A breakfast of bread and eggs can contain between 200 and 500 calories, depending on how it is cooked and how much bread and eggs are in it. egg are consumed.
Other health metrics, including waist circumference and blood lipid levels, were best for the participants who ate a moderate breakfast. Regardless of meal size, those who ate a high-quality breakfast were more likely to have poorer health data.
A lower quality breakfast would be high in nutrients such as salt, sugar and saturated fat, which are already known risk factors for several diseases if eaten in excess.
Breakfast still ‘the most important meal of the day’
The researchers could not exclude the impact of factors such as exercise from the study, nor did they intervene and feed the participants certain foods. So they could not establish a causal link between a moderate breakfast size and better health figures.
But they did suggest that eating a decent meal could prevent snacking later in the day.
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but what and how you eat it matters,” said study author Professor Álvaro Hernáez of Ramon Llull University in a statement. “Eating controlled amounts – not too much or too little – and ensuring good nutritional composition is crucial.”
“Our data shows that quality is associated with better outcomes in cardiovascular risk factors. It is just as important to eat breakfast as it is to eat a good quality breakfast,” he added. MailOnline.
The breakfast study was published in the Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging.