Breakfast omission and metabolic changes in overweight adolescents
Adolescents, overweight, obesity, eating habits, biochemical markers
Breakfast is one of the most important meals for adolescent development, as it provides a variety of macro and micronutrients for the body to function properly. However, the changes that come with adolescence can predispose to changes in eating habits that can lead to skipping meals such as breakfast. Skipping breakfast can lead to a wide variety of problems for the body, including obesity and dyslipidemia. Obesity is a chronic non-communicable disease that is considered a serious public health problem, and it is more worrying when it comes to children and adolescents, given the consequences and worsening throughout life. The aim of this study was to verify the association between skipping breakfast and metabolic changes in overweight adolescents. This is a cross-sectional study of 154 adolescents aged between 10 and 19 of both sexes and diagnosed as overweight or obese. Data was collected at three different times, with an interval of 30-45 days between each stage. The first stage involved collecting sociodemographic and economic data, clinical and dietary assessment using a semi-structured questionnaire and a 24-hour recall (R24), followed by anthropometric assessment. The second stage consisted of collecting blood for biochemical analysis and carrying out the 1R24h. In the 3rd stage, the results of the biochemical tests were delivered, and nutritional advice was given according to the degree of excess weight and biochemical alterations. We found that of the 154 participants who skipped breakfast, the majority were female (31%), aged 13 or over (42.9%) and with an income of more than one minimum wage (32.9%). In relation to breakfast consumption without ultra- processed foods, the highest percentages were female (39.4%), aged 10 to 12 (35.4%), overweight (43.2%) and with normal cholesterol (35.5%), but without statistical significance. We found a possible association between types of breakfast and BMI-age (p=0.087) and age (p=0.062), but without statistical significance according to the bivariate and multivariate Poisson analyses (p>0.05). When testing sociodemographic and metabolic variables to produce a multivariate model associated with skipping breakfast among overweight adolescents, it was not possible to estimate a significant model. We identified a significant model by testing the grouping variables based on the correspondence analysis of sociodemographic and metabolic variables in the population of overweight adolescents (p=0.019). The characteristics associated exclusively with each breakfast profile were omission of breakfast with tertile 1 of energy and overweight; breakfast with ultra-processed foods associated with the second tertile of income; and consumption of breakfast without ultra-processed foods associated with the highest tertile of income. It was concluded that most adolescents who skipped breakfast were girls and had better family purchasing power, with females also consuming ultra-processed foods at breakfast.