Undoubtedly, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It gives us energy and positive emotions for all day, provides us with a good dose of nutrients and reduces the risks of several serious health conditions. According to the findings of the IFIC Food & Health Survey, 93 per cent of today’s Americans are aware about the importance of having breakfast on a daily basis and never skipping it. Nowadays, a great deal of information is available about healthy breakfasts, the best breakfast foods and the most important facts about breakfast to keep in mind. There are plenty of studies related to the issue of breakfast and the effects of breakfast on our body and health, and researchers are coming up with more and more of new interesting ideas as to maximizing the benefits of our first meal of the day. A group of experts from Tel Aviv University has reported about their findings saying that having a dessert with breakfast can help suppress appetite, consume less calories during the day and stimulate weight loss. Israeli specialists are convinced that adding something sweet to our breakfast is an excellent and very smart idea to beat our cravings and consume less foods later the day, therefore, lose more weight and become leaner. These conclusions were made after working with 200 adult people with extra weight, assigning those to consuming low-calorie breakfasts and breakfasts with one sweet treat. As the further measurements have shown, the levels of hunger hormones in those participants who were asked to have a dessert with breakfast were much lower compared to the ones of those participants who had low-calorie sweet food-free breakfasts. It is interesting that both diets had the same total amount of calories, about 1,400 for women and about 1,600 for men, and the main difference was only a good nutritious breakfast of about 600 calories with a dessert like doughnut for one diet, while the other was allowing eating a large meal in the afternoon, with a 300-calorie breakfast with no sweet treat. It turned out that for the first four months of the experiment there were not much of differences between weight loss patterns of the members of both groups, and they lost on average 33 pounds per person. However, in the next four months , those participants who had a high calorie breakfasts managed to achieve more success in weight loss compared to those who had only 300-calorie breakfasts. According to the report, for the last four months of the study those who consumed breakfast with a sweet treat managed to lose 22 pounds on average, and those who consumed low-calorie and low-carb breakfasts lost only about 15 pounds per person. Another important benefit of eating a large breakfast of 500-600 calories is decreased feeling of hunger during the day, so adding a sweet treat to your morning meal is a great way to suppress appetite. Dr Daniel Jakubowicz, a study author and a professor at Tel Aviv University, commented on the work of her colleagues as the following: ”˜The goal of a weight loss diet should be not only weight reduction but also reduction of hunger and cravings, thus helping prevent weight regain. As the further blood tests have shown, the levels of hormone known as ghrelin or “hunger hormone” were as much as 45 per cent lower in those participants who had a dessert with breakfast compared to only 30 per cent decrease in those participants who had low calorie breakfast every morning. Israeli specialists consider that increased success from breakfast with a sweet treat can be achieved at the expense of a proper composition and timing of the meal. Dr Jakubowicz underlined that a dose of protein in the morning helps to suppress appetite and huger, and a little of glucose in the sweet treat helped the participants combat their cravings for fatty and other unhealthy foods during the day. The findings were published in summer 2012 in the journal Steroids. Source
