Ep.41 Is It Healthy For Teens To Eat Oatmeal Or Corn Flakes For Breakfast?

Could your bowl of breakfast cereal be the hidden culprit in a teen's weight loss struggle? Tune in to learn more about the results of a study comparing oatmeal, cornflakes, and just water for breakfast. 

Geliebter A, Grillot CL, Aviram-Friedman R, Haq S, Yahav E, Hashim SA. Effects of oatmeal and corn flakes cereal breakfasts on satiety, gastric emptying, glucose, and appetite-related hormones. Ann Nutr Metab. 2015;66(2-3):93-103. doi: 10.1159/000365933. Epub 2015 Jan 23. PMID: 25612907.

Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .

To get a free copy of 30 healthy and easy recipes for teens that are high in protein, visit
https://lifestyleforteens.com/recipes

To learn more about the LIFT Program, visit lifestyleforteens.com/program

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:04

This is the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. If you're a mom and want to help your child who is struggling to lose weight, you are in the right place. If you are looking for healthy lifestyle tips, dr Gorgery is here to help you understand the science around safe weight loss in teens and children, because what works for adult weight loss is not always the best for children. This podcast is for educational purposes only. Dr Gorgory does not provide medical, psychological or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems without consulting your own medical practitioner and now your host, dr Jenny Gorgory.

Speaker 2: 1:49

Hello, welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. This is Dr Jenny Gorgory, and today I wanted to talk about something that I hear a lot. This is about breakfast options, and two of the most popular breakfast options include oatmeal and also cornflakes. Now there has been actually a study, very interesting study that was done not in teenagers, however, I think that also applies to teenagers most likely, and that's why I want to bring it up how the two different options having oatmeal versus having cornflakes versus having water, how does that affect our hunger and our feeling of feeling full and how much we're eating for lunch afterwards? So this was a great study. As I mentioned was. The actual title of the manuscript is Effects of Oatmeal and Cornflakes Cereal Breakfast on Satiety, gastric, emptying, glucose and Appetite-Related Horm hormones. It was done in New York Nutrition Obesity Research Center in New York and, as I mentioned, it was done in adults.

Speaker 2: 3:07

Now what the researchers did is they asked men and women. There were approximately a total of 36 people. They were in their late twenties, early thirts, and they asked them to have three different breakfast options. One of them was oatmeal with a little bit of water and milk. The other one was cornflakes, again with milk, and the other one was water. Now they asked them to eat it all at the same time, like they gave them 10 minutes to finish their breakfast. They told them not to do exercise during that day of the experiment or the night before. They also told them to finish their dinner at the same time and the amount of calories they were equally the same between the oatmeal and the cereal. Now, after they had the breakfast, what they did is they asked them to go and eat lunch and then they measure, like how much lunch they had, and they also gave them some scales that they could measure what's their satiety level, like whether they feel full or not full, whether they feel hungry or not hungry, and how much from a scale from one to 10. And then they compared the results that they got. They also draw a blood test and they also did another test to see how much, how quickly, that stomach was emptying after the different options they ate. And, very interestingly, what they found was that on the days that they had the oatmeal, the subjects were feeling more full and they ate significantly less for their lunch than compared to when they had cornflakes or when they had water. They also looked at the time it takes for the stomach to absorb Tylenol really, but that's like an indirect method that they used to see how is the absorption of the food also affected, and they found that it takes longer for the stomach to empty when they are getting oatmeal compared to when they're having cornflakes.

Speaker 2: 5:37

Now, let me just pause here for a second and say that one of the reasons that all these anti-obesity GLP-1 medications work is because they slow down the absorption of the food from the stomach. Okay Now, and by having oatmeal you can achieve the same result. You can have your stomach. The food stays for longer in the stomach when you're having oatmeal compared to when you're having cornflakes, and that gives you this feeling of feeling full, which is similar to the feeling people that take all these obesity drugs have. And the question is why does this happen?

Speaker 2: 6:30

Well, one of the big secrets and the big benefits of having oatmeal as a breakfast is because you have more fiber compared to if you have just cornflakes. So cornflake is really refined. What we call refined carbohydrate is really sugar that is absorbed very quickly. It leads to high spikes of insulin and therefore, after the consumption of cornflakes or really any other breakfast or meal that is high in refined sugars, you get a high spike in insulin that leads to decrease in the insulin and a decrease in the sugar that also gives you this sensation of feeling more hungry. So one easy and natural way to help you feel more full that can help you have less breakfast, less lunch after a good breakfast, is if your breakfast has oatmeal compared to if your breakfast has refined carbohydrates like cornflakes. Now, of course, there are different types of oatmeal and different types of corn flakes. There is oatmeal that has sugar additional of extra sugar, and there is oatmeal that is just the oatmeal, which is just the fiber that you need, and there is corn flake that has obviously more sugar and corn flake that has less sugar, and these results can vary according to all these different factors.

Speaker 2: 8:11

But the main point I want to get across today is that if you are having breakfast and you feel hungry which I think is probably a good idea for most teenagers to do if it works out well with your schedule is to have better options for breakfast, and I would highly recommend having oatmeal because it has a lot of fiber. The secret here is fiber. What fiber does is it makes you feel fuller, it makes you feel less hungry and it can cut back on the amount of lunch, so you don't overeat for your lunch because you have a good, healthy breakfast. Now I recently had another episode where I talked about how breakfast can affect the weight in teenagers, and if you haven't listened to that, I invite you to go back and listen. It is on episode 35, skipping Breakfast and Student Weight Gain. You can go to lifestyleforteenscom forward slash 35. So it is a slightly different episode.

Speaker 2: 9:32

The focus and the main point I want to get across, as I said, from this episode, is, if you're having breakfast, choose oatmeal over cornflakes and, in particular, oatmeal that does not have sugar, because this can help you regulate your appetite, it can make you feel fuller and it can make you potentially not overeat during your lunch. Now, that's all I had for today. If you want to reach out to me, please feel free. Go to my website, lifestyleforteenscom, for a slash call. You can schedule a call with me. You can contact me. There are also free resources that you can download if you find helpful. There's free recipes, there's free smoothies, there's some other helpful information that you might find helpful, and if this was helpful, please also share it with your friends and family or somebody who you think may need to know. That's all I had for today and I will talk to you next week. Take care.

Speaker 1: 10:38

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, I invite you to come check out the Lyft program. It's Dr Gorgeri's 12-week coaching program for teens and their moms, where we take all this information, we apply it to your daily life and we work together so your teenager learns how to create a healthy lifestyle so they can feel happier, more confident, less stressed and love their body again. Visit the website at lifestyleforteenscom and click on the work with me and free resources to learn more about this program and get free help to start this journey right away. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode of lifestyle and weight loss for teens.