Even though many cereals are loaded with sugar, the Journal of the American Dietetic Association has published research funded by a major cereal maker that finds teenage girls who regularly eat cereal with breakfast weigh less than girls who skip the morning meal.
The study followed more than 2,000 girls over a 10-year period from childhood through adolescence. It was conducted by the Maryland Medical Research Institute and funded by a grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute with support from General Mills.
"The number of days eating cereal was predictive of a lower Body Mass Index for the girls in the study," said Bruce A. Barton, Ph.D., of the Maryland Medical Research Institute and the lead author of the study. "Those who demonstrated a consistent cereal eating pattern had healthier body weights and lower BMI's than those who did not."The study draws from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute Growth and Health Study, a longitudinal biracial observational cohort study that recruited 2,379 girls (1,166 white and 1,213 black) at the ages of 9 or 10 from locations in Berkeley, Calif.; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Washington, D.C.; and then recorded information gathered from the study participants over a period of 10 years.
Among the findings of the study:
• The risk for being overweight increased 13 percent among the girls
who did not frequently eat cereal.
• Fat content in the non-cereal breakfasts teen-aged girls choose is 60
percent greater than in cereal breakfasts.
• A pattern of consistent cereal eating was predictive of lower BMI.
• Ready-to-eat cereals made significant contributions to nutrients in
the diets of adolescent girls.
• The number of girls skipping breakfast doubles from the time they are
9 years old to 19 years old.
• By the time girls are 18 years old, fewer than one in 10 frequently
eat cereal.
"We followed girls over a 10 year period, and what we found was striking. From the age of 13 on, you can clearly see the girls who frequently eat cereal splitting from the majority of girls who do not eat cereal and are gaining more weight," Barton said. "For their age, significantly more girls who ate cereal had a normal body weight compared to those who didn?t eat cereal."
Nearly one in three adolescent girls is overweight or obese in the United States.
