Teens: Put Down That Breakfast Danish. Seriously

It turns out breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. And no, a cronut washed down with a pumpkin spice latte does not count.

A study recently published in the journal Public Health Nutrition reported that teens who skip the morning meal or only eat or drink something sweet have a higher risk of certain illnesses later in life.

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Those bad breakfast habits were linked to a higher incidence of "metabolic syndrome" as adults, which increases an individual's chances of suffering serious health problems like heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, according to the National Institutes of Health.

And the link was significant: The study reports that the odds for adolescents developing metabolic syndrome years later were a whopping 68 percent higher for those with poor breakfast habits.
 
"Further studies are required for us to be able to understand the mechanisms involved in the connection between poor breakfast and metabolic syndrome,” Maria Wennberg, the study's main author, said in a statement. “But our results and those of several previous studies suggest that a poor breakfast can have a negative effect on blood sugar regulation."

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Researchers at Sweden’s Umeå University began decades ago with 889 16-year-olds who filled out questionnaires on their morning meals. The researchers were able to reach their results after following up with the study participants years later, when they were in their 40s, to check on their health and gather new information.
 
The study concluded that abdominal obesity (think apple-shaped) and fasting glucose levels (a pre-diabetic condition) were most clearly linked to both that Cinnabon-a-day habit and, interestingly, skipping breakfast.

Of course, this is not the first study to prove that eating a nutritious breakfast is good for your health. A 2003 study in the Journal of Epidemiology found that people who skipped the first meal of the day had a 4.5 percent higher chance of being obese. 
 
So what should teens (or the rest of us, for that matter) be eating in the a.m.? A 2003 study from the Harvard Medical School found that those who ate whole-grain cereal for breakfast experienced the most health benefits, such as lower obesity rates and lower risk of heart attack.
 
Goodbye, Danish. Hello, oatmeal.

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