Not eating breakfast leads to obesity
Researchers say: Not eating breakfast makes the brain more inclined to eat high-calorie foods. Brain scans conducted by researchers have shown that not eating breakfast in the morning makes fatty foods and high-calorie foods seem more attractive to people during the day.
Scans of more than 21 people showed that the brain is more attached to food if the person does not eat breakfast, which made them eat larger quantities at lunch.
Some pictures of high-calorie foods were shown to twenty-one people of normal weight, while they were placed on an MRI machine at Imperial College London.
One day, they underwent a scan without eating breakfast.
On another day, they ate a large breakfast containing 730 calories an hour and a half before the scan.
The researchers found that skipping breakfast makes the brain more inclined to eat high-calorie foods.
The results, which were presented at the Neuroscience 2012 conference, showed that there was a difference in brain reactions when people who did not eat breakfast were shown pictures of high-calorie meals, compared to other pictures of low-calorie meals.
The results also showed that a part in the front of the brain could be responsible for “food cravings,” and that it becomes more active if the stomach is empty.
At the end of the study, the researchers found that when lunch was served to the participants, they would eat one-fifth more calories than if they had not eaten breakfast.
Dr. Tony Goldstone from Imperial College said: “Looking at the results of the MRI scan and monitoring the amounts they ate at lunch, we concluded that there is evidence that not eating makes people hungrier and more willing to eat large quantities and high-calorie foods.”
He added: “One of the reasons for the difficulty of losing weight is due to the increased desire to eat high-calorie foods.”
Dr. Catherine Hankey, lecturer in nutrition at the University of Glasgow, said that this study has shown that breakfast helps reduce appetite and is linked to stabilizing blood sugar levels.
Future studies will investigate the extent to which obesity affects the system that controls the brain.