Make Breakfast # 1 on your “To-Do List”

Make it a habit to have a good breakfast every day so that you will be healthy for all seasons of the year. Breakfast means to break the fast, because you did not eat any food while you slept for many hours throughout the night. After being without food for so many hours, it is very tempting to eat foods with very little nutrients in them.  Avoid the temptation to eat junk food when you are hungry (or at any other time).  You  do not have to rely on  sugar-laden cereals to fuel you with energy throughout the day. Bagels, doughnuts, pancakes or waffles loaded with artificial ingredients are not good for you either. Soda and chips are worse.

A Bad Breakfast Puts Your Brain to Sleep

Believe it or not, it is not just exhaustion that causes many students to sleep in class. Students often sleep in class because they had a bad breakfast or no breakfast at all.  Sometimes students can keep their eyes open after they have eaten a  bad breakfast but their brains usually go to sleep.

Science Behind Eating A Good Breakfast

A good breakfast provides the proper fuel that gives you energy to carry out activities that you need to do. After eating a proper breakfast, you will   feel much better throughout the day. The approximately 75 trillion cells in your body will carry out their proper functions when you feed your body the right nutrients from foods. Food nutrients also help your body to produce substances called hormones.

Your body makes about 50 different hormones that enable you to function as a healthy well balanced human being.  Your breakfast affects the proper production of these hormones. A good breakfast is good for the hormones that help to mellow your mood. But soda and sweets have substances that damage the happy hormones in your body. Happy hormones are body chemicals that help you to keep that spark in your temperament. Happy hormones make you feel good about yourself and respond positively to people and things around you.

Sweet things not only make you get fat. Cookies, sodas, sweet pastries and chips damage your hormones and turn your mind sluggish.  A sluggish mind cannot concentrate well.

Get a Good Breakfast

A healthy breakfast should not leave you hungry a few hours later.  If you really need to snack, have fruits instead of cookies and nuts instead of candies. Make a snack bag of fruits and vegetables and place it in the refrigerator before you go to bed each night. Parents are advised to encourage older children to prepare their own bags and to make the snack bags for children who are too young to fix the snacks for themselves. Select any of the combination below or put your own idea to work. Try to combine different colors so that you can get many of the vitamins and minerals that your body needs. It is difficult to break away from eating a traditional breakfast of sweets when you have been eating junk all the time. But try to see how easy it is to prepare foods that really nourish your body. See some examples below.

Try these Easy Breakfasts

A piece of left over chicken (from previous night’s dinner)

½ cup steamed vegetable (from previous night’s dinner)

½ cup parboiled potatoes sautéed in olive oil with garlic

1 cup of tea

1 orange

Preparation Time: 5 minutes

2 eggs, boiled overnight and placed in refrigerator

2 cups of oatmeal, boiled overnight and placed in refrigerator

1 cup of milk

1 banana

Preparation Time 5 minutes

Try combining your own selection of a meat, wholegrain cereal, some vegetables, a fruit and milk for your breakfast. To save time, use some leftovers

Snack bags to take to school

(Fix and place in refrigerator the night before)

• Kiwi and banana
• Strawberries and mango slices
• Plum and papaya slices
• Pear and banana
• Melon and apple slices
• Orange and papaya slices
• Mixed nuts
• Green, yellow and red peppers cut into strips and sprinkled with nuts
• Small pieces of broccoli and tomato wedgies sprinkled with nuts
• Do any other combination you like