According to a study developed by researchers at the University Of Minnesota School Of Public Health, breakfast does not only keep us healthy, but also in good shape.

The recent study revealed that teenagers who eat breakfast regularly are more likely to weigh less and eat a more healthy diet, while the teenagers who skip the morning meal tend to become obese.

The experiment involved 2,216 teenagers, whose breakfast habits were followed for five years, since they were a little under the age of 15. The results showed that the more regularly the teens ate breakfast, the lower their body mass index was. Body mass index is a statistical measure of body weight that can be calculated by dividing an individual’s weight by the square of their height. Apparently, the teenagers who skipped breakfast on average weighed about 2.3 kilograms more than the teenagers who ate breakfast every morning.

"What we found in the study was that kids who eat breakfast frequently, and especially every day, they're more healthy overall in terms of their lifestyle," Mark Pereira of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, who led the study, said in a telephone interview, as reported by Reuters.

"They're much more physically active and they have a better diet overall. So they have lower fat intake, lower cholesterol intake, higher fiber intake," Pereira added.

According to previous research, an estimated 25 percent of U.S. children regularly skip breakfast, while the rates of obesity have doubled in children and tripled in teenagers over the past two decades.

The results of the study are to be published in the March issue of the medical journal Pediatrics.