Maybe you should reconsider before you stop into the local deli in the morning for breakfast.
We all love a filling breakfast, especially when the weather is so dismal outside, but food experts have warned to think twice about your morning meal.
The study has likened a bacon butty for breakfast to a “health time bomb in a bun”. Their words, not ours.
Researchers found that just one high-fat meal can affect your heart health.
They said people who eat a bacon sarnie loaded with fat for breakfast will feel the ill effects well before lunch.
The experts explained that high-fat diets are associated with developing atherosclerosis, a narrowing of the arteries, over a lifetime.
Just one day of eating a fat-laden breakfast sandwich of processed cheese and meat on a bun and ‘your blood vessels become unhappy’ said Heart and Stroke Foundation researcher Doctor Todd Anderson.
The condition atherosclerosis can eventually lead to serious problems including heart disease, stroke or even death.
Now we know what to avoid next time we’re at the deli…
The key ingredients in the study were breakfast sandwiches and a group of healthy, non-smoking university students.
Fats can build up in the arteries over decades. One important measure of how healthy someone’s arteries are is to measure how much blood flow can increase in their arm in response to a brief interruption.
Dr Anderson wanted to see what would happen to the university students after starting their day with a fatty breakfast.
The students were studied twice, once on a day they had no breakfast, and once on a day when they ate two commercially-available breakfast sandwiches, a total of 900 calories and 50g of fat.
From just one isolated meal, the negative results are temporary. But the study also showed that such a high-fat offering can do more harm, and do it more quickly, than people might think.
“I won’t say don’t ever have a breakfast sandwich. But enough of a diet like that, and you can see how you can build up fat in the walls of your arteries,” Dr Anderson told the Daily Mail.
“Remember that whether you eat at home or go to a restaurant, you’re still in charge of what you eat,” Heart and Stroke Foundation spokesperson Doctor Beth Abramson said.
“So consider all the choices, and try to cut down on saturated and trans fats, calories and sodium. That’s one of the keys to decrease your risk of heart disease and stroke.”
