Good – Better – Breakfast!

You must have heard the expression “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” by now and you better believe it!

 

People who are most successful at losing and/or maintaining a healthy weight are breakfast eaters. This may be due to the fact that eating breakfast can help to keep hunger at bay and prevent people from over eating at the rest of the meals during the day. Your body knows that it needs a certain amount of food and food energy; skipping meals or under-eating can lead to overeating more kilojoules in an attempt to make up for the deficit.

 

Breakfast eaters tend to eat fewer kilojoules over the course of a day and aren’t as prone to big swings in blood sugar, hunger and energy levels.

 

Eating a protein-rich breakfast helps to stimulate your metabolism which has slowed down a bit during sleep. Breakfast, especially when it includes a good source of protein, is also a great way to start to replace some of the protein that is lost from our muscle during sleep as well.

 

Keep in mind though, that not all breakfasts are created equal. Grabbing a coffee and piece of cake (also known as a store-bought muffin) is not the way to go for many reasons. Even if you managed a skinny cappuccino made with milk or soy beverage, at least you’d be getting some much needed protein.

 

1. Add a Veggie or a Fruit

 

Plant foods are loaded with antioxidants and phytonutrients, buzzwords which simply means they have a lot of health-promoting properties above and beyond their vitamin and mineral content. They also help to ensure you meet your fiber requirements. Including some at breakfast will go a long way to help you reach the daily recommended intake of 5 servings of vegetables and fruit each day to help lower your risk for chronic diseases. How about adding shredded zucchini, spinach and peppers to your scrambled eggs?

 

2. Finesse Your Fiber

 

Women need about 25g per day and men 38g and most of us fall short on getting enough fiber. Breakfast is a great time to get more fiber as many breakfast foods are high in fiber. Go for unrefined grains like steel cut oats, unsweetened wheat bran fiber cereal: add a tablespoon to oatmeal, throw some into your smoothie or sprinkle some, along with some chia seeds and ground flax seeds, on top of cottage cheese or Greek yoghurt and fruit salad. Fiber helps to maintain a feeling of fullness, especially if paired up with protein [like cottage cheese, Greek yoghurt or whey protein powder in a smoothie].

 

3.Time Is of the Essence?

 

Some have suggested that timing is critical; that it’s important to eat breakfast within 60 of waking up to avoid your body from going into ‘starvation mode’. Although there is still controversy about this suggestion, it is definitely true that there are benefits from eating breakfast and in my opinion greater benefits when protein is included at breakfast. Do your best to have something even if it’s just a piece of fruit and a hard-boiled egg.

 

4. Protein Power

 

Protein helps to offset muscle protein losses that naturally occur while we sleep. Muscles are made up of protein and protein is made up of amino acids. During the night, muscle is broken down to supply our bodies with necessary amino acids so it’s critical to eat protein to replace them. Protein foods help to boost the metabolism and helps to provide a sense of satiety which, helps to keep hunger in check. Protein also helps to stimulate the rebuilding of muscle tissue. Good breakfast protein choices include eggs, cottage cheese, fat-free or low-fat cheese and yoghurt, nuts, seeds, legumes such as baked beans, protein powders like whey, or left over meats or fish.

 

5. Fat???

 

Fat is an essential nutrient, just like water, or vitamins and minerals. Fat also provides a sense of satiety; the ultimate triad of keeping hunger at bay is protein, fiber and fat. Fat is needed for the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins like D, A, E and K and the carotenoids found in fruits and vegetables like lycopene, beta-carotene and lutein. Many nutritious foods naturally contain fat like eggs, dairy foods like milk, yoghurt, and cheese, milk alternatives like hemp, and soy, nuts and seeds and proteins such as fish and meat. You don’t need to add fat to meals that contains these foods already. Including foods and fats like these at breakfast will also help to add flavour and fullness to your morning meal.

 

6. Lose the Juice

 

There’s nothing special or magical about fruit juice. Juice is lacking fiber and doesn’t require chewing like eating whole fruit does, as such; it’s easier to potentially over-consume juice and therefore calories. There are a couple of alternatives, low-sodium tomato juice, or vegetable cocktail is naturally low in sugar and rich in lycopene. Small amounts of 100% fruit juice like blueberry, pomegranate, grape, or freshly squeezed orange or grapefruit juice will be loaded with healthy antioxidants – just keep it to 125ml per day if you opt to have juice.

 

7. Add Some Egg-citment

 

Eggs are super versatile: hard-boiled, soft-boiled, fried, scrambled or poached. Because eggs taste great they’re an easy food for both adults and kids to enjoy. With 14 essential vitamins and minerals, including lesser known nutrients like choline and lutein, eggs pack a nutritional punch in a very small package. A large egg boasts decent amounts of vitamin A, choline, lutein, vitamin B2, B12, folate, biotin, phosphorus, zinc, selenium and more. Not only are the amounts of nutrients in eggs impressive, but those nutrients are absorbed much more efficiently than they are from plant foods. You might be worried about the cholesterol in eggs; don’t be. Egg consumption has never been shown to increase the risk for cardiovascular disease, and for those of whom it’s important, the Harvard School of Public Health has given the green light on regular egg consumption. One egg is a better choice than any piece of whole grain toast.

 

8. Optimize Omega-3 Fats

 

Omega-3 fatty acids are a unique form of polyunsaturated fat required for human health but not all omega-3 fats are created equal. There are two main types of omega-3 fat in our diet: plant-based alpha linolenic acid (ALA), and animal-based eicosapentanoic acid (EPA) and decosahexanoic acid (DHA). Humans can not convert ALA to EPA and DHA efficiently so it’s important to include foods with EPA and DHA such as fish, seafood, omega-3 fortified eggs, liquid egg products and/or fish and algae oils. Make no mistake, ALA from foods such as flax, chia, hemp, or soy beans is not the same as EPA and DHA.

 

There is no shortage of research supporting the health-promoting properties of EPA & DHA omega-3 fats. Many cultures will, and do, eat fish for breakfast so it’s just a matter of doing so on a consistent basis. You can also use omega-3 fortified eggs.

 

9. Dose Some Dairy

 

Dairy foods have been a staple of breakfast for what seems like forever. Dairy foods, while not mandatory for a healthy diet, can certainly be part of one. Everyone knows that dairy foods are a great source of calcium but they are also a great source of many other important nutrients too. Fluid milk has added vitamin A, some vitamin D, riboflavin or vitamin B2, vitamin B12, phosphorus and protein. Both cottage cheese and yoghurt are also sources of protein. A lesser appreciated dairy food for breakfast is aged cheeses; those that have been aged for more than 6 months. These are one of only a couple of sources of vitamin K2, a vitamin that is just starting to be appreciated despite being known about for decades. Vitamin K2 is especially important for its role in reducing the risk for osteoporosis and heart disease by helping to keep calcium in the bones and teeth where it belongs and out of blood vessels where it doesn’t belong. Vitamin K2 is showing promise in reducing the risk for diabetes, cancer, kidney disease and arthritis. Milk, cheeses, yoghurt and butter used to be very rich in vitamin K2 when we pastured dairy cows and they ate grass but that started to change in the late 1950s and early 1960s when they were moved inside and given feed base on corn and soy.

 

10. Shun The Sugars

 

Here we’re talking about the sugary cereals that have entire aisles dedicated to them in grocery stores. I’m not a huge fan of breakfast cereals in general since almost all of them are highly refined, including the so-called healthy versions but the worst offenders are those that are loaded with added sugars. Other breakfast foods to keep on your sugar radar are fruit bars, cereal bars, granola bars, yoghurt drinks or some of the fruit-flavoured stirred yogurts. A word to the wise, because the nutrition facts table doesn’t distinguish between naturally occurring and added sugars, be sure to double check the ingredient list. If sugar has been added, you’ll find it there.

 

11. Wicked Whey

 

Whey is derived from milk and is the richest source of a unique set of amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein and the three in particular are referred to as branched-chain amino acids. Whey, and branched chain amino acids have been shown to be the best at promoting muscle protein growth which is great for anyone who’s interested in maintaining muscle strength as they age. Whey has also been shown to be superior at increasing satiety or the sense of fullness after eating making it a great staple for breakfast smoothies. Whey is also a rich source of cysteine, another amino acid which the body uses to make a very important antioxidant called glutathione. Maintaining high glutathione levels throughout life has been associated with longevity and a lower risk for many degenerative diseases.

 

12. Include Some Intact Grains

 

While everyone has heard of whole grains, many will not be as familiar with the term ‘intact’ grain. Backing up a step, to be considered whole grain, a food may contain intact grains, or it can also contain minimally processed grains, or milled grains from which no component has been removed during the milling process. ‘Whole’ doesn’t mean intact, it means the sum, or the proportion, of the parts of the original intact grain need only be present in a food product.

 

In other words, food companies can produce products and claim that they’re made with whole grains but the quality of those products can vary greatly. Take for example steel cut oats, or barley, both intact grains compared to some, highly refined cereals that is 35-40% sugar by weight but can make the claim of being made with whole grains because the milled grain they’ve added back has its “principle components, the endosperm, germ and bran, in relative proportion to how they exist in the intact grain”. The real difference here is that an intact grain will retain more of the original nutrients and intact grains are digested much, much more slowly than any minimally processed or milled grain grain or grain product will, even whole grain ones.

 

Including more intact grains at breakfast is easy when you choose steel cut oats, 5-minute oats, or even quick oats. You can even add intact grains to your breakfast smoothie or protein shake.

 

The Slender Wonder Protein Plus Shake offers you the perfect breakfast alternative. It contains vitamins and minerals, fibre, fat, protein (including whey protein and soy), choline that is found in eggs, and its quick and easy when time is of the essence. So go on…. shake it up for breakfast!