I am sure most of us are aware of the saying, ‘Eat breakfast like a King, Lunch like a Prince and Dinner like a Pauper’. This ancient proverb has more than a grain of truth in it, however, being engulfed in our busy lives we tend to skip breakfast altogether.
Most nutritionists and medical practitioners stress that skipping breakfast is particularly bad news since; ideally, 25% of our daily calorie intake should come breakfast. Starting the day without refueling your body’s engine means poor concentration, irritability, low blood sugar and a dreadful craving for the biscuit tin or chocolate bar in the middle of the morning.
But the benefits of having a healthy breakfast are not only limited to better concentration or enhanced mood. A recent study published in the journal ‘PLOS Medicine’, has stretched the list of these benefits and added a lowered risk of developing type 2 diabetes among kids to the same.
The Study
The study led by researcher Angela Donin from the St. George’s University of London in Britain, focused on striking a correlation between having a healthy breakfast to a reduced risk of type 2 Diabetes Mellitus, particularly in kids.
The study followed a cross-sectional module and included 4,116 children aged 9 to 11 years from primary schools across the UK. The research team surveyed breakfast consumption and tested blood samples for measure blood lipids, insulin, glucose and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c).
The study helped in determining the graded association between breakfast frequency and type 2 diabetes risk markers in the blood.
Findings of the Study
Kids who ate breakfast every day had lower body mass index, total skinfolds, and insulin resistance than those who didn’t usually eat breakfast, researchers found.
Another observation stressed the inclusion of high fiber cereal breakfast to lower the levels of insulin resistance thereby improving the profile for natural disposition to develop type 2 diabetes. ‘There are many potential mechanisms which could be causing this, such as the role the breakfast meal has on breaking the overnight fast, or the importance of the distribution of energy intakes through-out the day,’ Donin said.
The study also looked at the cardiovascular risk factors amongst the kids and found that those who ate regular high fiber breakfast had more levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) or good cholesterol.
However, the authors cautioned that these results are not definitive to derive a medical conclusion and hence more trials will be required to quantify the protective effect of diabetes on the emerging risk of diabetes.
