According to the researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham taking high fat content food in breakfast may be healthier than one thinks as it prevents a person from metabolic syndrome.
Metabolic syndrome is characterised by abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, insulin resistance and other cardiovascular disease-risk factors.
For the study, the team examined the influence of type of foods and specific timing of intake on the development of metabolic syndrome characteristics in mice.
They observed that mice fed a meal higher in fat in morning had normal metabolic profiles, according to the study published in the International Journal of Obesity.
In contrast, mice that had a more carbohydrate-rich diet in the morning and consumed a high-fat meal at the end of the day saw increased weight gain, glucose intolerance, adiposity and other markers of the metabolic syndrome, the study said.
Lead author Molly Bray said, the research team found that fat intake in the morning seems to turn on fat metabolism very efficiently and also turns on the animal's ability to respond to different types of food later in the day.
"The first meal you have appears to program your metabolism for the rest of the day," said coauthor Martin Young.
When the animals were fed carbohydrates in morning, carbohydrate metabolism was turned on and seemed to stay on even when the animal was eating different kinds of food later in the day.
The implications of the research are important for human dietary recommendations as they rarely eat a uniform diet throughout the day and need the ability to respond to alterations in diet quality, said the researchers.
"Humans eat a mixed diet, and our study, which we have repeated four times in animals, seems to show that if you really want to be able to efficiently respond to mixed meals across a day then a meal in higher fat content in the morning is a good thing," Bray said.
"Another important component of our study is that, at the end of the day, the mice ate a low-caloric density meal, and we think that combination is key to the health benefits we've seen."
Asserting that adjusting dietary composition of a given meal is an important component in energy balance, they said, their findings suggest that recommendations for weight reduction and/or maintenance should include information about the timing of dietary intake plus the quality and quantity of intake.
Further research is needed to test whether similar observations are made with different types of dietary fats and carbohydrates, and it needs to be tested in humans to see if the findings are similar between rodents and humans, they added.
