Healthy Breakfast Ideas

Why is breakfast important?

Eating a good breakfast helps protect you from obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. A healthy breakfast helps you concentrate, think through problems, and do your best at work and school.

If you don’t eat breakfast, you will be hungry during a busy part of the day. Daytime is when you are active, so that’s when you need calories. If you skip breakfast, your blood glucose will tend to be low, so you are more likely to eat sugary or fatty foods for an energy boost. You are more likely to gain weight if you often skip breakfast.

If you have breakfast in the morning, you may eat fewer calories, eat less saturated fat, and feel better through the day. Eating a lot of calories late in the day, especially carbohydrates, makes it harder to balance blood glucose and insulin levels.

What should I eat?

There are a lot of healthy choices for breakfast, and most take little time to prepare. Here are some ideas to try:

• Cut back on sugary breakfast cereals, high-calorie pastries, and meats like bacon and sausage that are high in calories, saturated fat, and salt (sodium).
• Eat whole grains and high fiber foods such as hot or cold whole-grain cereals, bran muffins, crackers, or whole-grain bread.
• Eat fresh, dried, or frozen fruits as a healthy way to satisfy a sweet tooth.
• Include protein such as egg whites, peanut butter, chopped nuts, turkey, chicken, fish, or lean meats.
• Choose low-fat dairy products such as milk, yogurt, or cottage cheese.

Foods such as pastries, sugary breakfast cereals, or coffee drinks with lots of cream and sugar will quickly raise your blood glucose, but it will drop just as quickly. This can leave you feeling tired and shaky. Fast food breakfasts often add a lot of unhealthy saturated fat and salt to your diet. This can lead to weight gain and high blood pressure if you eat these foods often.