Breakfast Eating and Incident Coronary Heart Disease in a Large Prospective Cohort of American women

Background The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend breakfast for children but found insufficient evidence to make recommendations for adult eating habits (the timing and frequency of meals, snacks, and caloric beverages). Objective To conduct the first long‐term prospective study of eating habits and risk of incident coronary heart disease (CHD) in women. Methods Eating habits including breakfast eating and eating frequency were assessed in 2002 in 56,593 women from the Nurses' Health Study who were free of cardiovascular disease and cancer. During 8 years of follow‐up, 770 incident CHD cases were diagnosed. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for CHD, adjusted for demographics, diet, lifestyle, and other CHD risk factors. Results Among women less than 60 years old, those who skipped breakfast regularly had a higher risk of CHD (RR=3.82, 95% CI:1.07‐13.67) as compared to women who ate breakfast at least 5 times/week. However, this association was not present among women 60 years or over (RR=0.98, 95% CI:0.74‐1.30) (p, interaction = 0.05). No associations were observed between eating frequency (times/day) and risk of CHD. Conclusion Eating breakfast was associated with a lower CHD risk in women under 60 years of age, but not in older women. Support NIH Grants CA176726, HL034594