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Cut
Lunchtime Calories:
Eat a Better Breakfast
Excerpt
by Karen Pallarito,
HealthDay
Children who start the day with a bowl
of bran cereal, muesli high in nuts and seeds, or porridge made
from rolled oats feel fuller and eat less at lunchtime than kids
who down corn flakes or white bread for breakfast.
That's the conclusion of a new
British study that appears in the November issue of Pediatrics.
While further studies are needed,
the researchers say the results add to mounting evidence that
so-called low-glycemic index (GI) foods can play an important
role in controlling weight.
GI is a measure of how quickly
a carbohydrate raises a person's blood sugar level. High-GI foods,
such as croissants and corn flakes, are the kind of breakfast
fare that can cause a spike in blood sugar. Typically, these are
foods that are highly processed. Low-GI foods, by contrast, break
down more slowly in the body and tend to be higher in fiber, such
as whole-grain cereals and nutty breads.
In the new study, children who
ate a low-GI meal in the morning consumed significantly fewer
calories at lunch than kids on a high-GI breakfast. The study
is the first to observe such an effect in a group of normal and
overweight children, the researchers say.
"Clearly the inclusion of
low-GI foods is a good thing," says Janet M. Warren, a research
dietician at Oxford Brookes University and one of the authors
of the study.
The research was funded in part
by the university and through an unconditional grant from Great
Britain's Sugar Bureau.
In the United States, schools participating
in the federal-state School Breakfast Program are required to
meet federal nutritional requirements. Those requirements are
based on dietary guidelines updated every five years, with the
next release set for 2005.
Erik Peterson, a spokesman for
the American School Food Service Association, says the federal
advisory panel tapped to recommend the next set of revisions would
likely take into account the latest research on low-GI diets.
"We think it definitely should
be taken into consideration, just as [is] all current nutrition
research," he says.
Thirty-eight children, aged 9 to
13, participated in the breakfast study. Morning meals were served
at the youngsters' middle school, which already ran a breakfast
program.
Researchers devised three test
breakfasts of varying GI levels to see what effect they would
have on kids' appetite and lunch intake. Breakfasts were created
to roughly match the number of calories and nutritional content
each child would normally consume.
The children were divided into
five groups. Each group randomly received one of the three breakfasts
for a three-day period, with at least a five-week gap between
test breakfasts.
Before lunchtime, children were
allowed only water and a small serving of fruit provided for their
mid-morning break. At lunch, they were free to choose from a range
of foods on the school menu. The participants weren't told their
lunch intake would be closely observed.
Children who ate a low-GI breakfast
not only ate less at lunch but reported less hunger before lunch
than those who consumed the high-GI breakfast. That was true even
when a small amount of sugar was added to a low-GI breakfast to
make it tastier.
Warren and her colleagues are now
conducting further research to understand the effects of a low-GI
breakfast beyond lunchtime. "We don't know what happens for
the rest of the day," she says.
It would be premature to recommend
eliminating high-GI foods from the breakfast plate, she says.
But the study does highlight the potential of a low-GI diet amid
a growing epidemic of childhood obesity.
"Low-GI foods are sustaining
and potentially would mean children aren't going to get hungry
and snack," Warren says.
More information
To learn more about the value of
a nutritious breakfast for children, visit the Food
Research & Action Center. For more on children and nutrition,
check with Baylor
University.
Reference
Source 101
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