We’ve all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but do you know how important what you eat for breakfast is?
It’s very important to start off your day with breakfast in order to help kick start your metabolism and feed your brain for the inevitable upcoming stresses before lunch. However, this never means eat whatever is labeled as a breakfast food. Most breakfast cereals have an alarming amount of sugar, even those that are not as obvious as Lucky Charms. What’s even scarier is the high levels of salt in breakfast cereals, even those labeled as healthy and heart conscious.
Not even fruit juices are safe from the high-sugar analysis. In particular, apple juice (even pure apple juice) and pomegranate sugar have higher levels of sugar than commonly believed. Drinking one glass of either by itself is fine, but coupled with a sugary cereal, and you may as well eat chocolate cake for breakfast.
Another new trend in breakfast foods are sweet spreads for food, such as Nutella and chocolate spreads for toast, instead of fruit preserves or even jelly. More children are consuming these than adults, suggesting that parents are trying to appease picky eaters in the morning. As children are also more likely to eat sugary cereals, it’s becoming highly suggested that breakfast is causing the sharp incline in children tooth decay.
“It would help enormously if parents could encourage children to move away from breakfast cereals loaded with sugars and introduce them to healthier alternatives such as porridge or a boiled egg with wholemeal bread,” said Dr. Nigel Carter, Chief Executive of the British Dental Health Foundation. “It may be an easy solution to give children something sweet to appease them, but by keeping the consumption of sugary foods to a minimum, the benefits to oral health will have a lasting impact.”
Of course, before you can force your children to eat healthier for breakfast, the change in habits will have to start with you. Eat healthier breakfast foods in front of your children, such as fresh fruit and eggs, and hide the Nutella for at least a little while.