A study has found that choosing to skip breakfast at age 50 instead of eating a healthy, filling breakfast could lead to weight gain.
Around 380 Spaniards with ‘metabolic syndrome’ participated in a study for three years, where data on their health, weight and eating habits were collected.
Metabolic syndrome is a group of conditions that occur together and increase the risk of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
These include increased blood pressure, high blood sugar levels, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol levels.
The study found that a large breakfast, which makes up 20 to 30 percent of a person’s daily caloric intake, was better than a small breakfast or no breakfast at all.
Choosing to skip breakfast instead of eating a healthy, filling breakfast could lead to weight gain, study says
NHS guidelines recommend 2,000 calories a day for women and 2,500 for men. A healthy breakfast should make up 20 to 25 percent of a person’s daily caloric intake and include a variety of foods.
People in the study who ate around 400 calories for breakfast had a lower BMI than those who skipped breakfast, The Telegraph reported. Her waist was also an inch smaller.
The study found that those who ate a large breakfast were less healthy and larger than those who skipped breakfast.
The author of the study, Karla-Alejandra Pérez-Vega, from the Hospital del Mar Research Institute in Barcelona, told The Telegraph that they focused ‘exclusively’ on analyzing breakfast and that is why they cannot say if it is the most important meal of the day.
However, he added, “it is certainly an important meal, as it fulfills the fundamental function of breaking the prolonged period of sleep fasting.”
A healthy breakfast should make up between 20 and 25 per cent of a person’s daily caloric intake and include a variety of foods according to NHS guidelines.
He added that people who skipped breakfast were also included in the group that consumed the least energy.
He said they showed “higher weight values over time” compared to those who ate a large but healthy breakfast.
But a full English breakfast, he said, would not meet the criteria of a well-balanced breakfast as it “can exceed energy and saturated fat levels”.
MailOnline previously reported that eating breakfast before 7am could increase life expectancy.
Researchers at the City University of New York followed more than 34,000 Americans over the age of 40 over several decades.
Volunteers recorded meal times and scientists compared them to mortality rates over the course of the study.
The results, published in the Journal of Nutrition, showed that those who ate breakfast between 6 and 7 a.m. were six percent less likely to die prematurely from serious illnesses such as heart disease or cancer than those who regularly ate breakfast at 8 a.m. in the morning, and 12 percent less at 8 in the morning. risk of premature death than others who ate for the first time at 10 a.m.