Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. This might be an years old parable for you, but a study at Colombia University has just proved its essence. As per it, skipping breakfast leads to higher chances of strokes, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and various heart diseases.
By linking various studies relevant to breakfast and heart diseases, researchers found that those who skip breakfast are 18 per cent more likely to have a stroke and 27 per cent more likely to suffer from a heart attack.
According to the research:
“Epidemiological findings suggest a potential detrimental effect of late meals on cardiometabolic health, but clinical intervention studies, which would address causality, have been limited in scope and too diverse to draw definitive conclusions and make recommendations.”
Moreover, those who eat healthy and proper breakfast daily are less likely to gain cholesterol or face strokes. Lead author of the study, Professor Marie-Pierre St-Onge, said:
“Meal timing may affect health due to its impact on the body’s internal clock.
“In animal studies, it appears that when animals receive food while in an inactive phase, such as when they are sleeping, their internal clocks are reset in a way that can alter nutrient metabolism, resulting in greater weight gain, insulin resistance and inflammation.”
Similarly, she further suggested that successful planning should be done while eating breakfast:
“Making healthy, carry-on foods is important. This could be a homemade smoothie or whole grain muffin or cereal bar for breakfast; packing a sandwich or leftovers for those times when time is tight.
“We suggest eating mindfully, by paying attention to planning both what you eat and when you eat meals and snacks, to combat emotional eating.
“Many people find that emotions can trigger eating episodes when they are not hungry, which often leads to eating too many calories from foods that have low nutritional value.”
