Isn’t Breakfast a Calorie Killer?
According to the results of a new study, a sumptuous breakfast can help maintain weight. We’ll tell you what that might be.
Meanwhile there are nutrition tips like sand at the sea. And research does not seem to be in complete agreement on the right way to prevent obesity: some nutritional concepts recommend avoiding breakfast, while others declare the morning meal to be the most important of all. Scientists from the Psychoneurobiology Section of the University of Lübeck have now joined the second group: According to the results of their study, a hearty breakfast should help maintain weight.
Like an emperor in the morning?
For their laboratory test, the researchers first served 16 normal-weight men breakfast with few calories and dinner with many calories and then repeated the test the other way round for control purposes. Their conclusion: in the morning, the test subjects’ bodies burned 2.5 times as much energy as in the evening. It did not matter how many calories were eaten.
“The increase in blood sugar and insulin levels was significantly reduced after breakfast compared to dinner,” said nutritionist Juliane Richter. The researchers assume that this genetic daily rhythm is also maintained when one changes one’s diet, for example when dieting.
Less ravenous appetite through breakfast
In addition, it could be observed that a sumptuous breakfast curbed the desire for ravenous appetite (especially for sweets) throughout the day. On the other hand, those who consumed only a few calories in the morning tended to have much more ravenous appetite instead, which is bad for both weight and blood sugar. A follow-up study will now also investigate whether overweight people can also lose weight more easily with the help of breakfast.
With regard to the results, it should be noted that overall only a few subjects were examined and the study was conducted under laboratory conditions, not in everyday life. Nevertheless, it can’t hurt to test the method if you want to keep your weight.