Researchers studying effects of eating breakfast vs fasting overnight before an hour of cycling, with participants consuming a controlled breakfast followed by 3 hours rest, eating a breakfast of porridge made with milk 2 hours before exercise discovered eating breakfast increased rates the body burned carbohydrates during exercise, and increased the rate the body digested and metabolised food eaten after exercise. At post exercise or rest blood glucose levels and muscle glycogen levels were tested from the 12 healthy male participants. Eating breakfast before exercise was also found to increase carbohydrate burning during exercise from food eaten as well as from carbohydrates stored in muscles as glycogen.
According to the researchers their findings suggest at least after a single bout of exercise eating before breakfast primes the body making it ready for rapid storage of nutrition consumed when eating meals after exercise.
Fasting prior to trials is common to ensure control of baseline metabolic status, conditions may preclude applications of findings to situations most representative of day to day living as most people are not fasted during the day, making extrapolating from other studies where participants were fasted may not be reliable as being fed alters metabolism.
Short term responses to breakfast and exercise were only assessed in this study, additional studies are needed to investigate longer term implications of which ongoing studies are being conducted examining whether eating breakfast before or after exercise on a regular basis influences health outcomes.
