Should You Eat Breakfast While Intermittent Fasting?
A new study is casting doubt on the allure of intermittent fasting. The research, which evaluated more than 100,000 adults over nine years, claims that eating breakfast before 8am can reduce the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 59 per cent or, equally, eating the first meal later in the day can increase the risk of the disease.
This claim directly challenges one of the most popular diets of our time – intermittent fasting, which usually involves skipping breakfast. People tend to have their first meal later in the day, so the eating window extends to a reasonable time in the evening.
The confusion arises because, in the past, several studies have claimed that intermittent fasting can actually help to prevent Type 2 diabetes, with one 2014 study published in the medical journal Translation Research reporting that the blood sugar levels of diabetics who practised intermittent fasting dropped by up to 6 per cent, while fasting insulin was reduced by 20 to 31 per cent.
Excerpted from The National
