Whether you eat breakfast might be linked with your risk of dying early from cardiovascular disease, according to a new study.
Skipping breakfast was significantly associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular-related death, especially stroke-related death, in the study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology on Monday.
After a person’s age, sex, race, socioeconomic status, diet, lifestyle, body mass index and disease status were taken into account, the study found that those who never had breakfast had a 87% higher risk of cardiovascular mortality compared with people who had breakfast every day, said Dr. Wei Bao, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and senior author of the study.
“Breakfast is traditionally believed as the most or at least one of the most important meals of the day, but there are not much data available to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to this belief. Our paper is among the ones that provide evidence to support long-term benefits,” Bao said.
“There are a few cardiovascular risk factors — for example diabetes, hypertension and lipid disorders,” he said. “Our findings are in line with and supported by previous studies that consistently showed that skipping breakfast is related to those strong risk factors for cardiovascular death.”
Cardiovascular disease — specifically heart disease and stroke — is the leading cause of death in the world, accounting for a combined 15.2 million deaths in 2016, according to the World Health Organization. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States.
Skipping breakfast and cardiovascular death
The study involved data from 1988 to 1994 on 6,550 US adults, aged 40 to 75, who reported how often they ate breakfast in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
The survey data generally let respondents define what meal would be considered breakfast.
Separate data was analyzed to determine the adults’ health status through 2011. All told, 2,318 deaths occurred during an average follow-up period of 18.8 years, including 619 from cardiovascular disease.
The researchers took a close look at how often each person consumed breakfast and at mortality, specifically whether a death was related to cardiovascular health. The survey data generally let respondents define what meal would be considered breakfast.
Of those adults, 5.1% reported never consuming breakfast; 10.9% rarely ate breakfast; 25% had breakfast on some days; and 59% had breakfast every day.
Of those adults, 5.1% reported never consuming breakfast; 10.9% rarely ate breakfast; 25% had breakfast on some days; and 59% had breakfast every day.
Compared with those who consumed breakfast every day, adults who never did so had a higher risk of heart disease-related death and stroke-related death, according to the study.
Those associations were found to be significant and independent of socioeconomic status, body mass index and cardiovascular risk factors, the researchers noted.
Those associations were found to be significant and independent of socioeconomic status, body mass index and cardiovascular risk factors, the researchers noted.
“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first prospective analysis of skipping breakfast and risk of cardiovascular mortality,” they wrote.
The study had some limitations, including that the data did not include information about what types of foods or drinks were consumed for breakfast and whether a person’s breakfast consumption patterns changed between 1994 and when the followup mortality data was collected.
Most important, the study found only an association between skipping breakfast and risk of early death, not that skipping breakfast specifically causes any such outcomes. More research is needed to determine whether missing the meal actually could shorten life expectancy and why such an association exists.
