Eat This For Breakfast & You'll Get Fat

Eat toast made with white bread or any sugary cereal for breakfast, and you'll probably pack on the pounds--not because of the high calories in these foods, but rather because of their high glycemic index.

The BBC News Online reports that researchers from Oxford Brookes University have determined that these foods make you hungrier come lunchtime. That is, eat Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies for breakfast and you'll pig out at lunch.

What are the best breakfast foods? That would be cold or hot cereals made from whole grains. Oatmeal is ideal. As Mom used to say, oatmeal sticks to your ribs, and that means you'll eat more sensibly at lunchtime because you won't have strong hunger pangs.

The message here is exciting. Eat the right foods for breakfast and you could lose weight without dieting--just being smart in what you eat. Of course, the opposite is true as well. If you eat the wrong foods, you could gain weight even though you don't realize it. And the magic element is a low glycemic index or GI, which is a measurement--assigned as a number of 0 to 100--to describe the effect specific foods have on our blood sugar levels. Carbohydrates that breakdown quickly during digestion have the highest GIs with a blood glucose response that is fast and high. Carbohydrates that breakdown slowly, releasing glucose gradually into the blood stream, have lower GIs.

The study: The British researchers recruited 37 children ages 9 to 12 and divided them into three groups. The first ate a breakfast of porridge or a bran-based cereal with a glycemic value of less than 55. The second group had the same breakfast, but with added sugar to raise the glycemic value above 55. The last group ate white bread and sugary cereals with a glycemic value of 75 to 100. The children ate no snacks during the morning. At lunchtime, they were allowed to eat all they wanted from an open buffet.

The results: The kids who ate a breakfast with a low GI index ate significantly less for lunch than those who ate breakfast foods with a high GI. They were also less likely to feel hungry between meals, notes the BBC.

Calling the study "remarkable," lead researcher Jeya Henry told the BBC, "By selecting the type of breakfast we feed our children, we can alter their subsequent food intake. Feeding them a high GI breakfast will mean they will eat more."

If you want to eat foods with a low GI, the University of Sydney in Australia recommends the following:

* Breakfast cereals based on oats, barley, and bran.
* "Grainy" breads made with whole seeds.
* Reduce the amount of potatoes you eat.
* All types of fruit and vegetables (except potatoes).
* Plenty of salad vegetables with vinaigrette dressing.

The study findings were published in the journal Pediatrics.