Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Breakfast Foods Are The Most Important Foods in a Healthy Diet

By Jamis Hartley

Eating the right breakfast foods at the start of your day is a very important step that should not be excluded regardless of how busy or rushed you might be. Getting a good start in the morning will pay much better dividends in energy levels and possibly reduced waistline.

Breakfast foods typically have high sugar content if you purchase many of the ready made cereals that are on the market today. This isn't necessarily a good start for you or your children and tends to let them down about mid-morning.

It is a challenge to get the right balance of nutrients from our breakfast foods. It is especially difficult when we are so rushed in the mornings. Many households now have two working parents and young children that need to catch the school bus. We need to gather last nights homework and make sure we all look as sharp as we are, which leaves little time or thought for the morning meal.

It's quite possible to make the task of getting the right level of nutrition out of every morning a very manageable endeavor. By putting forth a little pre-planning effort you can have ready many great options for healthy breakfast foods making the choice of "what's for breakfast" an easy choice. You will no longer have to worry about whether you ate healthy or not. You simply follow your plan.

Thinking of what to eat at the last moment is where you will find yourself making the wrong choice. Many of us wouldn't choose unhealthy foods or even to skip a meal if we had other options available to us. Making those options available is as easy as spending a few minutes on a Sunday afternoon to prepare a meal plan. You will likely be able to make the morning less stressful and consume much healthier breakfast foods if you do a little preparation.

Involving the rest of the family in the pre-planning stages is a good idea too. Ask the kids what they would like to have for their Wednesday meal. Helping them understand what is healthy or not healthy will be much easier done in this setting than during the wild goings on of the morning. You could even have them participate in cooking a few things over the weekend. If they have helped cook it, they will likely be happy to eat it.

When the entire family participates in eating healthy the kids are a lot more likely to continue the process long after they have left the home. If they have participated in choosing the breakfast foods that will be on their plate in the morning and particularly if they have helped prepare those foods, they will be happy to eat them too.

The weekend is a great time when the mornings are a little less hurried. So, why not add an extra dozen muffins to the oven and wrap them for Monday and Tuesday? When the evening meal rolls around and you're making that delicious coffee cake for dessert, make it from whole wheat flour and make two. Two pans don't take any longer to mix up than one, and offer you a good choice of breakfast foods for the weekdays when time is at a premium.

Give yourself an edge when it comes to breakfast foods by making them ahead of time and getting what you and your kids like, and what your body needs. The advantages you get from using good grains and avoiding processed cereals will be apparent in the extra energy that you feel at work or school.

About the Author:

No comments: