Skipping Breakfast May Lead To Obesity

Health conscious teens generally skip the first meal of the day to keep their body fit. But, a new U.S. study suggests that teens and adolescents who skip morning meal have a higher risk of being overweight.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, revealed that Teens and adolescents who regularly eat breakfast are less likely to become overweight or obese in the near future and they typically lead a more active, healthier lifestyle than those who usually skip the meal.

Published by Project Eating Among Teens (EAT) in the March issue of journal Pediatrics, the latest research looked at 2,216 adolescents in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota. A team of researchers, headed by Mark Pereira of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, followed the dietary habits and lifestyles of study participants for five years to determine any possible link between body weight change and breakfast.

All the study participants, who were just under 15 years old when they entered the study, completed detailed surveys on their eating patterns and also provided information on their height, weight, body-mass index and physical activity.

After gathering the data, the researchers found that the more regularly the teens ate breakfast, the lower their body mass index (BMI) was.

BMI is a standard obesity measure that divides the weight by the square of the height. A person is classified as ‘obese’ if his or her body mass index (BMI) is 30 or over. From the clinical point of view, obesity is typically evaluated by measuring BMI, waist circumference, and evaluating the presence of risk factors and comorbidities. In epidemiological studies BMI alone is used to define obesity.

BMI is a simple and frequently used method for estimating body fat:

A BMI less than 18.5 is ‘underweight’
A BMI of 18.5 - 24.9 is ‘normal weight’
A BMI of 25.0 - 29.9 is ‘overweight’
A BMI of 30.0 - 39.9 is ‘obese’
A BMI of 40.0 or higher is ‘severely (or morbidly) obese’.

"What we found in the study was that kids who eat breakfast frequently, and especially every day, they're more healthy overall in terms of their lifestyle," the lead researcher Pereira said. “They’re much more physically active and they have a better diet overall. So they have lower fat intake, lower cholesterol intake, higher fiber intake.”

Those who always skipped breakfast were found to weigh about 5 pounds (2.3 kg) more than their peers who ate the meal every day.

According to the latest research, an estimated 25 percent of U.S. children regularly skip breakfast on a regular basis, and the number of breakfasts skipped increases at an alarming rate as children grow up.

According to American Obesity Association (AOA), obesity is a complex, multi-factorial chronic disease involving environmental (social and cultural), genetic, physiologic, metabolic, behavioral and psychological components. It is the second leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.

Approximately 127 million adults in the United States are overweight, 60 million obese, and 9 million severely obese.