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Teen Girls Who Eat Cereal Stay Thinner

September 10, 2005
Even though many cereals are loaded with sugar, the Journal of the American Dietetic Association has published research funded by a major cereal maker that finds teenage girls who regularly eat cereal with breakfast weigh less than girls who skip the morning meal.

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The study followed more than 2,000 girls over a 10-year period from childhood through adolescence. It was conducted by the Maryland Medical Research Institute and funded by a grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute with support from General Mills.

The study draws from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute Growth and Health Study, a longitudinal biracial observational cohort study that recruited 2,379 girls (1,166 white and 1,213 black) at the ages of 9 or 10 from locations in Berkeley, Calif.; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Washington, D.C.; and then recorded information gathered from the study participants over a period of 10 years.

Among the findings of the study:

• The risk for being overweight increased 13 percent among the girls who did not frequently eat cereal.

• Fat content in the non-cereal breakfasts teen-aged girls choose is 60 percent greater than in cereal breakfasts.

• A pattern of consistent cereal eating was predictive of lower BMI.

• Ready-to-eat cereals made significant contributions to nutrients in the diets of adolescent girls.

• The number of girls skipping breakfast doubles from the time they are 9 years old to 19 years old.

• By the time girls are 18 years old, fewer than one in 10 frequently eat cereal.

"We followed girls over a 10 year period, and what we found was striking. From the age of 13 on, you can clearly see the girls who frequently eat cereal splitting from the majority of girls who do not eat cereal and are gaining more weight," Barton said. "For their age, significantly more girls who ate cereal had a normal body weight compared to those who didn?t eat cereal."

Nearly one in three adolescent girls is overweight or obese in the United States.

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