It is often said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. After hibernating overnight and remaining without food for 12 hours or more, your body craves nutrition. On waking up, your brain, which uses glucose to work, lacks energy. Breakfast restores your glucose levels and gets your metabolism back into action.
Eating in the morning has other benefits too apart from satisfying hunger. It improves concentration and memory and is good for your waistline. Breakfast-eaters tend to control their weight better than those who skip it regularly (and overeat later in the day when they feel hungry!). In addition, good breakfast habits are helpful for people suffering from high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.
Nutritionists advise that while breakfast should be eaten within two hours of waking up, a lot depends on what you eat. The day’s first meal should be loaded with important nutrients like calcium, iron; protein, fiber and Vitamin B. Unfortunately, the breakfast foods commonly consumed in India are not made for good health. The excess of sugar, butter, ghee (clarified butter) and oil poses a huge problem.
Greasy, oily foods have a high concentration of bad fats, undermining health. They are also dense with calories and dietary fats, leading to obesity and elevated levels of bad cholesterol (LDL). The slow but steady deposition of fat and plaque on the walls of arteries obstructs blood flow and eventually triggers a heart attack or stroke. High cholesterol can also create a bile imbalance, leading to gallstones.
Ghee (clarified butter) and butter – popular components of a typical Indian breakfast – are rich in saturated fats made from whole milk. Their regular consumption by eating deep-fried dishes like puris, buttery paranthas, white bread and oily daal can accumulate bad fat in the body to dangerous levels. Greasy, fatty and sugary foods also have a negative impact on the immune system, raising your vulnerability to a wide range of diseases, from common cold to cancer.
Butter substitutes sourced from plant-based ingredients have zero cholesterol and come enriched with healthy fats like Omega 3. Their daily use instead of butter helps restore the balance of omega nutrients in the body and maintain a healthy heart. Replacing regular intake of ghee, butter and sugar with healthier substitutes in your diet is the key to a disease-free life, according to health experts.
To maintain optimum health, you also need to cut down on added sugar, replacing sugary breakfast cereals with those high in fiber and low in sugar content. Sugar addicts can use sugar substitutes as a safe alternative. These are also ideal for those suffering from diabetes, obesity and other health conditions. Stevia, aspartame, and sucralose are three sugar substitutes popular worldwide those are now available in India too.
So what does one eat in breakfast and what does one avoid?
Choose foods that are rich in whole grains, fiber, protein and carbohydrates, and low in added sugar or saturated fats. It is important to rotate your diet – don’t eat the same dish every day. Have variety in terms of dishes even on the same day – consume a little bit of everything.
Some healthy breakfast options include porridge, oatmeal, fruit salad, whole wheat bread, table spreads with Omega-3, muesli, multi-grain dosa, poha, upma, sambar dal, soya, sprouts, vegetable sandwiches, corn, low-fat or zero-fat milk and yogurt, buttermilk, cottage cheese, fresh fruit juices, brown rice, whole grain cereals, and fruits like bananas, water-melons and apples. Avoid foods with a high sugar content like pastries and cereals filled with sugar, canned fruit juices, omelets or paranthas fried in unhealthy cooking oils, butter or ghee, white bread, white rice, French toast, instant noodles, fatty meats, yogurt and other products made from whole milk. Go for healthier substitutes to butter and sugar. A good breakfast is even more important for kids and teens. Those who eat healthy food in the morning get more energy and are much more likely to take part in physical activities, which in turn helps prevent obesity and lifestyle diseases. Such children do better in school and take fewer days off. They are also much less irritable, restless, tired or grumpy, say experts.
So everyone should take breakfast seriously, be it adults or children.
(Dr Shail Yadav is a nutritionist at Infinity Diet Clinic, Chennai)
