Skipping Breakfast Linked to Mortality

A US prospective cohort study revealed that skipping breakfast was associated with a significantly increased risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD). The study included a nationally representative sample of 6,550 adults (mean age 53.2 years; 48.0% male) from 1988 to 1994, with 17 to 23 years of follow-up. In the cohort, 5.1% never consumed breakfast, 10.9% rarely consumed breakfast, 25.0% consumed breakfast some days, and 59.0% consumed breakfast every day. During 112,148 person-years of follow-up, 2,318 deaths occurred including 619 deaths from CVD. After adjustment for age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, dietary and lifestyle factors, body mass index, and CVD risk factors, participants who never consumed breakfast compared with those consuming breakfast everyday had hazard ratios of 1.87 for CVD mortality and 1.19 for all-cause mortality. The findings suggest that a pattern of skipping breakfast identifies a population at risk, either causally linked or just as an epiphenomenon. Source: http://www.onlinejacc.org/