Health briefs: Skipping breakfast adds weight? That's a myth

For some nutritionists, this idea is an article of faith. Indeed, it is enshrined in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which recommends having breakfast every day because "not eating breakfast has been associated with excess body weight."

As with many nutrition tips, though, the tidbit about skipping breakfast is based on scientific speculation, not certainty, and indeed, it may be completely unfounded, as the experiment in New York indicated. At 8:30 a.m. for four weeks, one group of subjects got oatmeal, another got frosted cornflakes and a third got nothing. And the only group to lose weight was … the group that skipped breakfast. Other trials, too, have similarly contradicted the federal advice, showing that skipping breakfast led to lower weight or no change at all.

"In overweight individuals, skipping breakfast daily for 4 weeks leads to a reduction in body weight," the researchers from Columbia University concluded.

Eating spicy food is associated with a reduced risk for death, an analysis of dietary data on more than 485,000 people found.

Study participants were enrolled from 2004 to 2008 in a Chinese health study, and researchers followed them for an average of more than seven years, recording 20,224 deaths. The study is in BMJ.

After controlling for family medical history, age, education, diabetes, smoking and many other variables, the researchers found that compared with eating hot food, mainly chili peppers, less than once a week, having it once or twice a week resulted in a 10 percent reduced overall risk for death. Consuming spicy food six to seven times a week reduced the risk by 14 percent.

Rates of ischemic heart disease, respiratory diseases and cancers were lower in hot-food eaters. The authors drew no conclusions about cause and effect, but they noted that capsaicin, the main ingredient in chili peppers, had been found in other studies to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.

Researchers, writing in Lancet Oncology, pooled data from 36 prospective and retrospective epidemiological studies that included 27,276 women with endometrial cancer and 115,743 healthy controls.

The longer women had used oral contraceptives, the greater the protection. Each five years of use was associated with a 24 percent lower risk compared with those who had never used them.

For 10 to 15 years of use, the risk was cut nearly in half, and the protection persisted for more than 30 years after they stopped taking the pills.

Vitamin D supplements may be ineffective in improving bone density or bone strength in postmenopausal women, a clinical trial found.

Researchers randomized 230 women to one of three groups: a low-dose group who took 800 units of vitamin D daily; a high-dose group who took 50,000 units twice a month; and a group that received placebo pills. There was no difference among groups in changes in bone mineral density or trabecular bone score, a measure of osteoporosis risk. Nor was there any difference in the number of falls or the ability to exercise. The study is in JAMA Internal Medicine.