Another American study has supported previous findings which suggest that teenagers who eat a filling, healthy breakfast are less likely to be overweight or obese.

Study co-author and associate professor of epidemiology and community health at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Mark Pereira, said, ‘There’s a pretty significant inverse association between how frequently kids report eating breakfast and how much weight they gain over time, and we took into account other dietary factors and physical activity. It’s interesting to note that the kids who eat breakfast on a daily basis overall have a much better diet and are more physically active’.

Over a third of US teenagers are overweight or on the verge of becoming so and this is a trend which has previously been linked with breakfast-skipping, as those who do not start their morning with a proper meal are more likely to snack, and snack unhealthily, throughout the day. It is estimated that up to 34 per cent of children and adolescents do not regularly eat breakfast and this percentage appears to increase with age.

‘There has been quite a lot of published scientific literature already on the relationship between breakfast habits in both children as well as adults and obesity risk. It’s pretty darn consistent in the literature that people who eat breakfast are at lower risk for obesity, but most of those studies have some methodological limitations’.

The new study, however, attempted to overcome the limitations of previous studies by being cross sectional and studying subjects over a period of several years. Over 2,000 young people were studied over a five year period, and detailed information about their eating behaviour, weight, height, body mass index and physical activity was recorded. The findings indicated that the more often an individual consumed breakfast, the less likely they were to be overweight, although Pereira said that no definitive statements about cause and effect could be made.

Dr Peter Richel, chief of paediatrics at Northern Westchester Hospital Centre in Mount Kisco, New York, said; ‘What happens is that total fat and saturated fat as a percentage of total daily energy were lower in the breakfast eaters compared with breakfast skippers. This really shows that we have the potential to improve energy balance and weight control with healthy breakfast consumption. We’re not talking pop-tarts’.