Chocolate cake with breakfast can help weight-loss

A new study finds that eating a piece of chocolate cake as part of the morning breakfast, may help to loss weight. A team from Tel Aviv University found that eating pudding as part of a balanced 600-calorie breakfast that also includes proteins and carbohydrates, can help dieters to lose more weight - and keep it off in the long run. The key is to indulge in the morning, when the body’s metabolism is at its most active and we are better able to work off the extra calories throughout the day, according to Professor Daniela Jakubowicz and her team. Attempting to avoid sweets entirely can create a psychological addiction to these same foods in the long-term, she said. So adding dessert items to breakfast can control cravings throughout the rest of the day. A meal in the morning provides energy for the day’s tasks, aids in brain functioning, and kick-starts the body’s metabolism, making it crucial for weight loss and maintenance. And breakfast is the meal that most successfully regulates ghrelin, the hormone that increases hunger, explains Professor Jakubowicz. While the level of ghrelin rises before every meal, it is suppressed most effectively at breakfast time. The study consisted on 193 clinically obese, non-diabetic adults who were randomly split into two groups. Although both groups consumed the same amount of calories per day (men 1600 and women 1400) the first group were given a small low carbohydrate, 300 calorie breakfast and the second were given a 600 calorie high protein and carbohydrate breakfast that always included a dessert cake Published in the journal Steroids, the study showed that half way through the 32-week program, both groups had lost the same amount of weight, but by the end of the program the second group of participants who added dessert to their breakfast cookies, cake, or chocolate, lost an average of 18 kilos more than a group that avoided such foods