Breakfast Consumption Association with Body Status and Physical Activity Among Female University Students

Abstract

Breakfast consumption is associated with many benefits, including behavioural, cognitive, and affective aspects. Young adults, especially female university/college students, frequently fail to meet the prescription of nutritional intake and often skip meals, particularly breakfast. Thus, this study investigates the associations of breakfast consumption with body status and level of physical activity among female university students. A total of 165 female university students, mean age 21.9 ± 1.5 years from Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Shah Alam, Malaysia, voluntarily took part in this study. Body weight, height, waist circumference and body fat percentages were measured using standard procedures. The odd ratios were calculated to compare in level of physical activity between breakfast skippers and non-skippers. The findings revealed that breakfast consumption was not significantly associated with body mass index (BMI), waist circumference or physical activity level. Conversely, the results showed that breakfast consumption was significantly associated with body fat percentages (%BF) (p<0.05; p=0.006). The results show that skippers were more likely (OR: 1.6; 95% CI) never to perform mild exercise or only performed mild exercise for less than half an hour per day (56.5%) compared to non-skippers (43.5%) even though the data did not meet the level of statistical significance. Among the respondents, skippers (56.5%) were more likely (OR: 1.6; 95% CI) to spend less than half an hour in moderate exercise than non-skippers (43.5%). Also, the data indicates that non-skippers (53.3%) were more likely (OR: 2.4 times) to do moderate exercise of more than half an hour than skippers (46.7%). Skippers (65.3%) tend to do more strenuous exercise of less than half an hour (OR: 5.3; 95% CI) compared to non-skippers (34.7%). Emphasizing the importance of eating breakfast may lead university students to have better healthy lifestyles, improve academic achievement and prevent obesity crisis among young adults.