Skipping Cereal and Eggs, and Packing on Pounds

clipped from www.nytimes.com Researchers have found evidence that Mom was right: breakfast may really be the most important meal of all. A new study reports that the more often adolescents eat breakfast, the less likely they are to be overweight. The researchers examined the eating and exercise habits of 1,007 boys and 1,215 girls, with an average age of 15 at the start of the five-year study — a racially and economically diverse sample from public schools in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The authors found a direct relationship between eating breakfast and body mass index; the more often an adolescent had breakfast, the lower the B.M.I. And whether they looked at the data at a given point or analyzed changes over time, that relationship persisted. For the study, which appears in the March issue of Pediatrics, the researchers recorded food intake using a well-established food frequency questionnaire and added specific questions about how often the teenagers ate breakfast.