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Item #5
Breakfast
Reduces Chances of Obesity and Diabetes
People
who eat breakfast are up to 50% less likely to be obese and
diabetic than those who usually do not.
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."
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