WASHINGTON — Patients who regularly skip breakfast have as high a risk of obesity as patients who have a family history of type 2 diabetes, a cross-sectional study of adolescents has shown.
Regularly skipping breakfast has been linked to obesity before, but Alison Okada Wollitzer, Ph.D., who reported the study at the annual scientific sessions of the American Diabetes Association, said she and her colleagues at the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute in Santa Barbara, Calif, wondered about the importance of the link and the reasons for it.
They studied 2,700 high school students in Santa Barbara and found that skipping breakfast doubles the risk of obesity—just as a family history of diabetes does.
Those with both risk factors—breakfast-skipping and a family history—had double the risk of obesity as did adolescents with only one of the risk factors, Dr. Wollitzer reported in a poster presentation at the meeting.
Adolescents at two public high schools who did not have a known diagnosis of diabetes (1,060 males and 1,640 females) participated in a brief physical exam and lifestyle questionnaire, which asked if breakfast was eaten on school days. Only those answering yes or no were included in the analysis.
Obesity was defined as having a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile; diabetes in any first-degree relative constituted a positive family history. About 34% of the students were white and 57% were Hispanic.
Of those who skipped breakfast but had no family history of diabetes, 16% were obese, compared with almost 18% of those who ate breakfast but had a positive family history.
Only 8% of the adolescents with neither risk factor were obese. Of those who skipped breakfast and had a positive family history, 32% were obese, Dr. Wollitzer reported.
Students who ate breakfast regularly were less likely to eat junk food at lunch, more likely to eat fruits and vegetables, and more likely to exercise regularly, she reported.