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NEW YORK — Teenagers who did not eat a good breakfast were more likely to be obese and have elevated blood sugar in middle age, a new study shows.

Researchers at Umea University in Sweden found that teens who reported eating no breakfast or only sweets were two-thirds more likely to develop a cluster of risk factors linked to heart disease and diabetes when they were in their 40s than their peers who ate more substantial morning meals.

“It may be that eating breakfast aids in keeping to a healthier diet the rest of the day,” the study’s lead author, Maria Wennberg, told Reuters in an e-mail.

Kids who miss breakfast experience hunger surges and tend to overeat later in the day, David Ludwig, a paediatrics and nutrition researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, said. He was not involved in the current study.

Wennberg and her colleagues reviewed data from 889 people in Lulea, Sweden. In 1981, when they were 16 years old, the participants completed questionnaires about what they ate for breakfast on a single day.

Researchers then examined them in 2008, when they were 43 years old, for metabolic syndrome, a collection of risk factors that can lead to heart disease, diabetes and stroke.

They found that 27 per cent had developed signs of the syndrome, according to the study published in Public Health Nutrition.

Moreover, those who reported missing breakfast or eating a poor-quality one as a teenager were 68 per cent more likely to have metabolic syndrome in middle age.

When the researchers analysed separate components of the syndrome, they found that obesity and high blood-sugar levels at age 43 were linked with poor breakfast habits at age 16.

About 35 per cent of US adults have metabolic syndrome, according to the American Heart Association. In addition to a large waistline and high blood sugar, components of the syndrome include high blood pressure and low “good” cholesterol.

Past studies found links between higher quality diets and healthier lifestyles, the authors write. Poor breakfast habits may therefore be part of an unhealthy lifestyle.

The authors noted the study’s limitations, including that the 1981 questionnaire asked teens only about a single day’s breakfast. They also did not know the participants’ adult breakfast habits.

Wennberg called for more research on the link between adolescent breakfast habits and middle-age disease as well as for studies evaluating the benefits of school-breakfast programmes “both because of effects on metabolic health and because of effects on academic performance”.

“This may especially be of value in areas with socioeconomic disadvantage,” she said.

Ludwig agreed, citing the benefits of a healthy breakfast on physical health as well as on thinking skills and academic performance. But he questioned the quality of the government-subsidised or free breakfasts that millions of American children currently receive at school.

“The rule is these breakfasts are cheap, low quality and of potentially marginal benefit,” he told Reuters. “This is a tremendous missed opportunity.”

An ideal breakfast would include protein, healthy fat and a source of carbohydrates like fruit or vegetables or minimally processed grain, he said.

The amount of money available for the federally funded US School Breakfast Programme “is woefully inadequate”, and “the nutritional standards are archaic,” Ludwig said.

“In some cases, the schools have virtually outsourced the kitchen to the fast-food industry,” he said.

He noted that the US Senate this week sent to President Barack Obama a bill to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme, commonly known as food stamps, by about $900 million a year, or roughly 1 per cent. About half of food stamp recipients are children.

NEW YORK –– Half of parents with an overweight or obese child think their kids are slimmer than they actually are, according to a new review of past studies.

In 69 studies of more than 15,000 children, researchers found many parents with an overweight child thought their son or daughter was at a healthy weight or below. Others with an obese kid thought the child was normal or just a bit heavy.

“We know that parents play a very crucial role in preventing childhood obesity and interventions are most successful if they involve parents,” said Alyssa Lundahl. She led the study at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

But, Lundahl said, if parents don’t recognise their child is overweight or aren’t concerned, they aren’t going to take steps to address it.

“Previous research has found that when parents’ perceptions are corrected, they do start to take action and encourage their children to become more active and maybe turn off the TV and go outside and play,” she told Reuters Health.

The studies included children and teenagers ages two and up. In each case, researchers had parents assess their child’s size using pictures, rating scales or other techniques. Then they measured the children to determine whether they hit weight-to-height cut offs for being overweight or obese.

Just over half of parents — 51 per cent — thought their overweight child was normal or underweight or thought their obese child was normal, underweight or just overweight.

It’s possible parents in the studies wanted to avoid labelling or stigmatizing their child, Lundahl and her colleagues write. Or, their understanding of what an overweight child looks like could be distorted from media reports on childhood obesity showing images of severely obese kids.

The authors did the same analysis looking at 52 studies of about 65,000 normal-weight children. They found 14 per cent of those children’s parents also underestimated their kid’s weight, thinking the child was underweight.

Lundahl, whose research is published in Paediatrics, said parents can make sure their child’s paediatrician is checking whether the child is in the normal weight-to-height range.

Conversations about weight can be difficult for both paediatricians and parents, noted Dr Raquel Hernandez, from All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“Parents do have to be more open-minded to the conversation of how they feel about their child’s weight,” Hernandez, who wasn’t involved in the new research, told Reuters Health.

“For the motivated parent who is open-minded there may be an issue, there is a real potential to make an impact in young kids,” she said. That’s important because children who are overweight are much more likely to grow up to be obese than their normal-weight peers if they don’t change their habits.

Hernandez recommended parents of overweight children cut down on sugary drinks like juice and be careful with portion sizes.

No matter what size children are, parents should encourage them to eat healthy and be physically active, Lundahl said.

Lynn Brann, a paediatric nutrition researcher at Syracuse University in New York, agreed.

“Parents of children with all body weights can be helped in terms of improving their nutrition and their health,” Brann, who also wasn’t involved in the new research, told Reuters Health.

She said she avoids telling parents to make weight, itself, a big deal with their kids.

“It’s not about weight; it’s about what your body can do and how you fuel it,” she said.

It is all about breathing, actually. One takes some time to realise this but that is all there is to it. With each cycle of inhaling and exhaling, we reinforce the fact that we are living beings. And the moment we stop breathing, we cease to be, in every sense of the term.

The very first gulp of air is forced into our tiny lungs the moment we are born, sometimes instigated by a smart slap on our behinds, by the obstetrician or midwife in charge. It is only after we yell back in response that a confirmation of our origin is marked on the birth certificate. Subsequently, with every breath we take, our bodies grow and develop till we achieve adulthood. And finally, our last gasp transports us into an oblivion from where nobody has ever come back to tell the tale.

This is a well documented fact and most of us are familiar with it. What comes as a big surprise is when the term “breathing” is associated with inanimate things like wine for instance, particularly red wine.

For people who like their “happy hour” it is no longer sufficient to order an alcoholic or non-alcoholic drink looking at the pricelist that is supplied by the bartender. With the advancement in culinary science, one is now also supposed to gather additional knowledge about the beverages that accompany particular dishes. Even the most uninitiated of us follow the blanket rule of asking for white wine with white meat, and red wine with a rare, medium or well done steak.

The challenge presents itself when one is in the company of a wine snob. Who is that you want to know? I will tell you in just a minute. It is easy to spot one in any party. They usually are the ones pontificating about the year of the wine, its proper pronunciation, its maturity, the right temperature, the correct concentric swirl, the cut of the glass in which it is served and so on. If a goblet of wine handed to them is without a stem, they throw an instant tantrum.

And that is even before they get down to the “decanting” part. This is the process of transferring the contents of a wine bottle into a wide bottomed, narrow necked decanter for sometime so that it can “breathe”; aerated wines give out more aromas and flavours upon serving. Such is the belief. And for the wine snobs, all several of them, it is also the gospel truth.

I am not a wine expert and every glass of bubbly tastes the same to me. It is by the intensity of the hangover that I suffer the next day that I conclude whether the wine served to me was of good quality or not.

So, wine snobs usually keep away from me. But the other night at a party I was accosted by one.

‘This wine needs to breathe,” a posh voice said.

“It has a nose?” I asked.

“Can you decipher the wispy notes of lively rose and vanilla?” the posh voice continued.

“Nope, only the taste of fermented and dead grapes,” I said.

“Should have been decanted for an hour at least,” the voice insisted.

“Yes, or poured into a new bottle,” I suggested, swiveling my glass.

One shapely eyebrow was arched at me and after that I was left alone.

I immediately breathed in a sigh of relief. 

CHICAGO — Could too much sugar be deadly? The biggest US study of its kind suggests the answer is yes, at least when it comes to fatal heart problems.

It doesn’t take all that much extra sugar, hidden in many processed foods, to substantially raise the risk, the researchers found, and most Americans eat more than the safest amount.

Being in the highest risk category in the study means your chance of dying prematurely from heart problems is nearly three times greater than for people who eat only foods with little added sugar.

For someone who normally eats 2,000 calories daily, even consuming two 12-ounce (340-gramme) cans of soda substantially increases the risk. For most American adults, sodas and other sugary drinks are the main source of added sugar.

Lead author Quanhe Yang of the US Centres of Disease Control and Prevention called the results sobering and said it’s the first nationally representative study to examine the issue.

Scientists aren’t certain exactly how sugar may contribute to deadly heart problems, but it has been shown to increase blood pressure and levels of unhealthy cholesterol and triglycerides; and also may increase signs of inflammation linked with heart disease, said Rachel Johnson, head of the American Heart Association’s nutrition committee and a University of Vermont nutrition professor.

Yang and colleagues analysed national health surveys between 1988 and 2010 that included questions about people’s diets. The authors used national death data to calculate risks of dying during 15 years of follow-up.

Overall, more than 30,000 American adults aged 44 on average were involved.

Previous studies have linked diets high in sugar with increased risks for non-fatal heart problems, and with obesity, which can also lead to heart trouble. But in the new study, obesity didn’t explain the link between sugary diets and death. That link was found even in normal-weight people who ate lots of added sugar.

“Too much sugar does not just make us fat; it can also make us sick,” said Laura Schmidt, a health policy specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. She wrote an editorial accompanying the study in Monday’s JAMA Internal Medicine.

The researchers focused on sugar added to processed foods or drinks, or sprinkled in coffee or cereal. Even foods that don’t taste sweet have added sugar, including many brands of packaged bread, tomato sauce and salad dressing. Naturally occurring sugar, in fruit and some other foods, wasn’t counted.

Most health experts agree that too much sugar isn’t healthy, but there is no universal consensus on how much is too much.

US government dietary guidelines issued in 2010 say “empty” calories including those from added sugars should account for no more than 15 per cent of total daily calories.

The average number of daily calories from added sugar among US adults was about 15 per cent toward the end of the study, slightly lower than in previous years.

The authors divided participants into five categories based on sugar intake, from less than 10 per cent of daily calories — the safest amount — to more than 25 per cent.

Most adults exceed the safest level; and for one in 10 adults, added sugar accounts for at least 25 per cent of daily calories, the researchers said.

WASHINGTON — A car might see a deadly crash coming even if its driver doesn’t, the US government says, indicating it will require automakers to equip new vehicles with technology that lets cars warn each other if they’re plunging towards peril.

The action, still some years off, has “game-changing potential” to cut collisions, deaths and injuries, federal transportation officials said at a news conference Monday.

A radio signal would continually transmit a vehicle’s position, heading, speed and other information. Cars and light trucks would receive the same information back from other cars, and a vehicle’s computer would alert its driver to an impending collision. Alerts could be a flashing message, an audible warning, or a driver’s seat that rumbles. Some systems might even automatically brake to avoid an accident if manufacturers choose to include that option.

Your car would “see” when another car or truck equipped with the same technology was about to run a red light, even if that vehicle was hidden around a corner. Your car would also know when a car several vehicles ahead in a line of traffic had made a sudden stop and alert you even before you saw brake lights The technology works up to about 300 yards (274 metres).

If communities choose to invest in the technology, roadways and traffic lights could start talking to cars, too, sending warnings of traffic congestion or road hazards ahead in time for drivers to take a detour.

The technology is separate from automated safety features using sensors and radar that are already being built into some high-end vehicles today and which are seen as the basis for future self-driving cars. But government and industry officials see the two technologies as compatible. If continuous conversations between cars make driving safer, then self-driving cars will become safer as well.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has been working with automakers on the technology for the past decade, estimates vehicle-to-vehicle communications could prevent up to 80 per cent of accidents that don’t involve drunken drivers or mechanical failure.

Crashes involving a driver with a blood alcohol content of .08 or higher accounted for nearly a third of the 33,500 traffic fatalities in the US in 2012, according to the safety agency.

The technology represents the start of a new era in automotive safety in which the focus is “to prevent crashes in the first place”, as compared with previous efforts to ensure accidents are survivable, said David Friedman, the head of the agency.

No orders to automakers are imminent, officials said.

After an agency report, the public and carmakers will have 90 days to comment, then regulators will begin drafting a proposal, and that process could take months to years. But Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said it is his intention to issue the proposal before President Barack Obama leaves office.

“It will change driving as we know it over time,” said Scott Belcher, president and chief executive of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America. “Automobile makers will rethink how they design and construct cars because they will no longer be constructing cars to survive a crash, but building them to avoid a crash.”

Government officials declined to give an estimate for how much the technology would increase the price of a new car, but the transportation society estimates it would cost about $100 to $200 per vehicle.

Automakers are enthusiastic about vehicle-to-vehicle technology but feel there are important technical, security and privacy questions that need to be worked out first, said Gloria Bergquist, vice president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

“The technology may well play a larger role in future road safety, but many pieces of a large puzzle still need to fit together,” she said.