This is your body on breakfast
Findings from a study called the Bath Breakfast Project at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom illustrate the effect that morning meals have on glucose balance. (See infographic below.) Researchers asked a group of subjects to eat 700 or more calories by 11 a.m. and another to fast until after noon. Both groups could eat whenever and whatever they wanted the rest of the day. Blood sugar was monitored every 5 minutes.
Although the two groups ate similarly after noon, the breakfast skippers had bigger spikes and drops in glucose levels. The breakfast eaters improved their insulin sensitivity—the body’s response to rises in glucose—by 10 percent. “Eating breakfast seems to have a ‘second-meal effect,’ says James Betts, Ph.D., the lead researcher and a senior lecturer in nutrition and metabolism. “It primes your metabolism to maintain stable blood sugar levels after subsequent meals.”