Eat a proper breakfast every day, and your heart will thank you.
Research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology links skipping breakfast with a higher risk of atherosclerosis — where plaque builds up in arteries causing them to harden and narrow, which can lead to heart disease.
That’s the conclusion from studying more than 4000 Spanish men and women who were quizzed on their daily diets and subsequently split into three categories.
The first and smallest group, the breakfast skippers, consumed less than 5 percent of their total calories in the morning — only having coffee, juice, or some other alcoholic beverage.
The second and largest group, the low-energy breakfast consumers, had between 5 and 20 percent of their total calories in the morning — eating the likes of coffee, juice, toast, fruit, or pastries.
The third group, the high-energy breakfast consumers, had 20 or more of their total calories in the morning — enjoying foods such as cereal, ham, and tomato, in addition to similar choices as the low-energy group.
Atherosclerosis was most common among breakfast skippers, but also among the low-energy breakfast eaters.
These groups also showed more cardiometabolic risk markers such as higher waist circumference, body mass index, and blood pressure.
"This study provides evidence that [regularly skipping breakfast] is one bad habit people can proactively change to reduce their risk for heart disease,” said study co-author Dr Valentin Fuster in a statement.
It’s not so much that skipping breakfast directly causes plaque to build up in your arteries, but that breakfast skippers generally have less healthy habits than breakfast eaters, heightening their cardiovascular risk. (The skippers were more likely to be overweight or obese and had poorer overall diets.)
"Aside from the direct association with cardiovascular risk factors, skipping breakfast might serve as a marker for a general unhealthy diet or lifestyle which in turn is associated with the development and progression of atherosclerosis," said Dr Jose Peñalvo, the study’s senior author.
Research published by the American Heart Association in January suggested skipping breakfast could be bad for your health because of its dire impact on your body clock — which may disrupt your metabolism, contributing to weight gain, insulin resistance and inflammation.