Feed the Heart

According to the Mayo Clinic, to minimize heart trouble, there's one meal you shouldn't skip.

Bring on the bacon. Grab the Pop-Tarts. Crack open the eggs. Squeeze the juice, smear some cream cheese on the bagel and pour yourself some Cocoa Puffs.

Why? It's time for breakfast - and you'd better be eating it. Sure, we all grew up hearing it was "the most important meal of the day," but most of us assumed that was just Mom's way of guilting us into grabbing a banana as we burst out the door to catch the bus. Although, that may have been true, it also turns out Mom was on to something.

According to a new study from Mayo Clinic researchers, breakfast is, in fact, the most important meal of the day, at least when it comes to the health of your heart. Throughout the course of 20 years, doctors tracked the breakfast habits and health statistics of some 2,100 individuals. The monitoring began in early adolescence and continued into adulthood. The goal of the study was simple: to determine the positive or negative overall health effects of skipping breakfast.

Respondents who grew up in...