Breakfast Disaster

Toast and Marmalade for breakfast

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To convince people to eat cornflakes, Kellogg’s came up with a slogan, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day”, and then proceeded to spread the

message.  Today, many people think this is based on science and firmly believe the message.  Most breakfasts are a health and nutritional disaster.

Is this the sort of thing you eat for breakfast?  Toast; porridge; oats; WeetBix; cornflakes; cocoa pops; orange juice; marmalade; jam; honey; pop tarts; milk; fruit; Fruit loops or Frosty flakes.  For most people the answer is yes.  Pour it into a bowl, add some fruit, maybe sugar, pour some milk and eat, or perhaps throw the bread in a toaster, add some butter, jam or honey and eat.  Maybe wash it down with orange juice.

Unfortunately this breakfast is almost equivalent to just scooping sugar into your mouth, but worse, because the refined grains used in these foods will spike the glucose in your blood faster than table sugar.  What you’ve done is loaded your body and blood with a huge amount of energy and low nutrition and created an emergency for it to deal with.

Let’s analyze a breakfast of 2 thick slices of white toast with butter and honey plus 400 ml glass of orange juice.  Using “East Diet Diary” we have, Protein 11 grams, Fat 13 grams, Carbs 103 grams, 573 calories.

Your blood sugar is stable with 6 grams of glucose, but you just loaded on about 85 grams of glucose and 20 grams of fructose.  This creates an emergency.  While you are going on with your day, your body is desperately dealing with a glucose load that is more than 14 times what it wants.  Insulin is mobilized to get the glucose out of your blood and into muscles and liver, then once they are full, is converted to fat and sent for storage in fat cells.  The fructose is converted to fat in your liver.

If you are healthy, this process will take around 3 hours, but if you are a bit overweight, it can take over 5 hours.  At about the 3 hour point, you will probably feel hungry and so have a mid morning snack.  If it is also carb heavy, then the process starts all over again.

11 grams of protein is too little for an adult.  You should be eating about 1.5 - 2.0 grams of protein for each Kg of your weight.  So for a 65 Kg woman this means at least 30 grams per meal.

A better breakfast would be 2 eggs and some chicken or bacon, and a cup of tea or coffee. 342 calories.  Glucose (5 grams) would be controlled,  protein, 34 grams and the fats would provide energy without an insulin surge.  Plus you wouldn’t need a mid morning snack.

Seek medical advice before dietary changes, particularly if on medication.  George Elder, Certified Health Coach, Author, Diploma in Nutrition.   

The best thing you can do for your health is eat better.