Study: Poor Breakfast in Youth Linked to Metabolic Syndrome in Adulthood

30 Jan 2014 --- It is often said that breakfast is important for our health and a study conducted by Umeå University in Sweden, published in Public Health Nutrition supports this claim. The study revealed that adolescents who ate poor breakfasts displayed a higher incidence of metabolic syndrome 27 years later, compared with those who ate more substantial breakfasts.

Metabolic syndrome is a collective term for factors that are linked to an increased risk of suffering from cardiovascular disorders. Metabolic syndrome encompasses abdominal obesity, high levels of harmful triglycerides, low levels of protective HDL (High Density Lipoprotein), high blood pressure and high fasting blood glucose levels.

The study asked all students completing year 9 of their schooling in Luleå in 1981 (Northern Swedish Cohort) to answer questions about what they ate for breakfast. 27 years later, the respondents underwent a health check where the presence of metabolic syndrome and its various subcomponents was investigated.

The study shows that the young people who neglected to eat breakfast or ate a poor breakfast had a 68 per cent higher incidence of metabolic syndrome as adults, compared with those who had eaten more substantial breakfasts in their youth. This conclusion was drawn after taking into account socioeconomic factors and other lifestyle habits of the adolescents in question. Abdominal obesity and high levels of fasting blood glucose levels were the subcomponents which, at adult age, could be most clearly linked with poor breakfast in youth.

"Further studies are required for us to be able to understand the mechanisms involved in the connection between poor breakfast and metabolic syndrome, but our results and those of several previous studies suggest that a poor breakfast can have a negative effect on blood sugar regulation," says Maria Wennberg, the study's main author. 

The study has been conducted by researchers at the Family Medicine Unit within Umeå University's Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine and has been published in the journal Public Health Nutrition.

Reference: Wennberg M, Gustafsson P E, Wennberg, P and Hammarstrom A (2014). Poor breakfast habits in adolescence predict the metabolic syndrome in adulthood. Public Health Nutrition, doi:10.1017/S1368980013003509