The Most Important Meal – Breakfast

If you’re a woman trying to avoid gaining weight, listen to this! Women who eat breakfast are less likely to become overweight than those who skip it. Michigan State University researchers analyzed nutritional information from over 4,000 men and women. Three-quarters of them ate breakfast – fewer in the younger age group, rising to over 90% in the over 70s. One in five of them ate cereal for breakfast.

Those women who ate breakfast were24% less likely to be overweight than those who skipped it. And if they ate cereal, they were 30% less likely to be overweight than those who skipped breakfast altogether. But in men, there was no such effect.

The researchers don’t offer an explanation for this effect, or why it was only seen in women. But they do point out that breakfast eaters were more likely to be non-smokers, regular exercisers, and trying to control their weight. The study was financially supported by Kelloggs , and there’s some emphasis that the cereal mentioned was ready-to-eat cereal.