Score another for the most important meal of the day. A new study published in Circulation suggests that men who routinely skip breakfast have a whopping 27 per cent higher risk of dying of heart attack or other coronary disease compared to men who made sure to get their morning fuel.
Just how thorough is this study? Researchers examined the eating habits of nearly 27,000 American men over a period of sixteen years, adjusting for demographic, diet, lifestyle, and other coronary heart disease risk factors. When everything is adjusted for, men who skipped breakfast had a 27 per cent higher risk of coronary heart disease.
However, skipping breakfast isn’t the only way to find an early grave. The study also found that men who ate late at night ran a 55 per cent greater risk of coronary heart disease than those who skipped the midnight snack.
Of course, a number of factors may be at play here. These bad dietary habits may be indicative of men with high-stress lifestyles, or men who don’t pay that much attention to healthy lifestyle choices. That said, it probably won’t hurt you to do better than a drive-through coffee each morning.
Photo courtesy of rob_rob2001.
