MONITOR:WE KNOW IT matters what we eat, but does it matter when? A recent study in the US looked at the question of breakfast, the meal that has been most significantly hijacked by the manufacturing industry. Should we, as the saying goes, breakfast like a king, or is it better to nibble on something small before heading out the door?
I have been particularly vexed by this question as I send my two children off to school, in the case of one with something substantial and the case of the other, frequently nothing at all. How can you study on nothing?
The nutritional value of a bowl of cereal is hardly counted as brain food, I tell my son, but now I have some evidence to back it up. Research done at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in the US looked at the effects of diet and meal times on metabolic syndrome.
Metabolic syndrome looks at cardiovascular disease-rich factors such as insulin resistance, high triglycerides and abdominal obesity. Okay, so the trials were on mice, but the results were nonetheless interesting. Mice fed a meal high in fat after waking had a normal metabolic profile, while those fed a carbohydrate- rich diet in the morning and a high-fat meal at the end of the day saw increased weight gain, glucose intolerance and other signs of the metabolic syndrome.
The study’s lead author, Molly Bray, a professor of epidemiology, reckons the research suggests that the early fat call turns on fat metabolism very efficiently and also turns on the ability to respond to different types of food following that first meal. In contrast, the carbohydrate- focused first meals turned on the carbohydrate metabolism, which isn’t as well equipped to handle the different foods coming later.
Martin Young, another of the report’s authors says: “This study suggests that, if you ate a carbohydrate-rich breakfast, it would promote carbohydrate utilisation throughout the rest of the day, whereas if you have a fat-rich breakfast, you have metabolic plasticity to transfer your energy utilisation between carbohydrate and fat.”
Where mice (at least in clinical trials) eat the same diet, we tend to eat a hugely varied diet and need the ability to respond. The focus on diet in sport is only one of the many recent practical applications of this kind of research and there is clearly much to learn for everyday eating. Bray points out that modern life is not good at enabling us to plan our food journey through the day. A fat-rich meal at the start is a good way to warn the body to be up for anything.
So does this mean I cook up a full Irish every day? Not at all, but I am focused on making sure fat-rich foods are considered. Oats come top of the fat league in grain terms and seeds and nuts score well too – that means porridge, muesli and granolas. And, while my son won’t hear of it, kippers and even mackerel and plaice are a delight, with or without a poached egg. Bacon sandwiches get the thumbs up, as do bagels with sausages and eggs. And, really, who is complaining? It sounds like good breakfasts to me.
While the next stage in the research is to trial different kinds of fats and carbohydrates, there is also the need to see how things pan out with humans instead of mice. My own contribution was to ask my son, who did admit that the mid-morning craving was not nearly so acute. As to his learning ability, I received only a non-committal mumble. That’s teenagers for you.
