Quality, Not Quantity May Be The Key To A Healthy Breakfast

Not surprisingly, the study led by Dr Betts found that people who eat breakfast burn more calories when they exercise, but eating the meal, or not, had no effect on burning calories at rest. Neither did eating breakfast suppress appetite for the rest of the day. Breakfast eaters still wanted to eat other meals, although their blood sugar levels tended to be more stable in the afternoon.

Both of these studies, however, miss an important point. What you eat for breakfast may be as important as whether you eat breakfast or not. Here is what studies looking at breakfast foods, than breakfast as a meal, have found:

• Eating eggs for breakfast enhances weight loss. It is important to be clear: Eating eggs for breakfast in addition to all the other high-calorie foods one can find on an American or British breakfast table does not offset overeating or failure to exercise. However, if you are already dieting, then choosing eggs for your breakfast protein may make sticking to your diet easier. Studies have found that high-quality protein, like eggs, for breakfast, suppresses the release of the hormone ghrelin. This hormone makes you hungry; eggs and similar high-protein foods keep you from getting as hungry. Raising cholesterol levels is not an important concern for most people. Even if you eat two eggs a day, your body makes more than five times as much cholesterol as you get from the eggs.
• Coffee may kill your appetite. People tend to eat the same amount of food during the day, one study found, even if they skip breakfast and just drink coffee. If you are planning to visit an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, be sure to order coffee with your meal. Both regular and decaffeinated coffee have this effect. Remember, cream and sugar have calories, and coffee drinks (like those offered by Starbucks) can have as many calories, mostly in the form of sugar and fat, as a small meal.
• Whole grain cereals provide carbohydrate, modest amounts of protein, and fiber that is good not just for you but also for the probiotic bacteria that live in your digestive tract. There is no evidence, however, that whole grains have to be eaten at breakfast.
• Juice from red oranges reduces blood pressure and arterial inflammation. Other kinds of oranges, however, do not have this effect. It only takes drinking half a cup (120 ml) of red orange juice to get this protective benefit.
• Dairy products at breakfast reduces the need to eat morning snacks. This effect seems to be especially important in controlling childhood obesity. Most people have some degree of lactose intolerance in adulthood, and may need to consume yogurt or cheese rather than whole milk or cream. If you consume dairy, you get the same high-quality protein, and the same appetite control, provided by eggs. Consuming a high-protein breakfast every day, day after day, however, reduces its effect on hunger.

The key to a good breakfast is to eat high-quality protein. For most of us, that means eggs, meat, or dairy products, but fish, minimally processed soy products, such as tofu, and even beans and legumes are also helpful. Eating "just any" breakfast food, doughnuts and sugary cereals, for example, provides few benefits for health.

See Also: Don't Skip Breakfast And Stay Healthy

An Afterword: Doesn't Some of the Research Literature Suggest Horrible Consequences from Not Eating Breakfast?

The research literature also contains studies that find that women who suffer high anxiety levels, or high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, tend not to eat breakfast. What these studies do not demonstrate is whether skipping breakfast causes "feeling stressed out" or high stress levels cause skipping breakfast. There are also studies that find that children who skip breakfast are more likely to be victimized by bullies, but this would seem to be a spurious correlation, that is, there is little or no causative relationship between breakfast choices of one child and behavior of another.