Can­di­da Khan

Break­fast is said to be the most im­por­tant meal of the day, but do we eat break­fast dai­ly? Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it is of­ten re­gard­ed as the most for­got­ten meal of the day. Women usu­al­ly skip this meal be­cause of busy sched­ules, work de­mands or even the be­lief that it helps with weight loss. Eat­ing bal­anced meals, specif­i­cal­ly break­fast, can im­prove women’s health, en­er­gy lev­el and long-term well­ness, but it de­pends on what we feed our bod­ies.

The first meal of the day is break­fast. This is the meal eat­en af­ter a night of sleep, which is usu­al­ly with­in the first few hours of be­ing awake. If you sep­a­rate the word, it means break­ing the fast since the body goes through sev­er­al hours with­out food when sleep­ing.

Your body al­ways needs nu­tri­ents to re­store en­er­gy lev­els and sup­port your dai­ly bod­i­ly func­tions. Oth­er ben­e­fits in­clude reg­u­lat­ing me­tab­o­lism, sta­ble blood sug­ar lev­els and im­prov­ing con­cen­tra­tion in the morn­ing.

Con­se­quences of skip­ping break­fast are of­ten over­looked. These are not lim­it­ed to fa­tigue, low en­er­gy, in­creased risk of over-eat­ing, weight gain, hor­mon­al im­bal­ance and slow­er me­tab­o­lism. When we eat, our me­tab­o­lism jump starts as we need en­er­gy to di­gest the food that we eat. Calo­ries are need­ed to di­gest and ab­sorb nu­tri­ents to sta­bilise blood sug­ar and hor­mones, which helps to pre­serve mus­cle mass and re­duce crav­ings.

What should we look for to call a break­fast healthy?

• High di­etary fi­bre for di­ges­tion and longer-last­ing en­er­gy

• Com­plex Car­bo­hy­drates for fu­el

• Vi­t­a­mins, min­er­als from fruits and veg­eta­bles

• Good qual­i­ty pro­tein

Meals that con­tain high amounts of re­fined sug­ars can spike blood sug­ars, which can be fol­lowed by en­er­gy crash­es lat­er. I would rec­om­mend these nu­tri­tious break­fast op­tions for women in Trinidad:

1. Overnight oats with some fresh fruits, mixed nuts, cin­na­mon pow­der, se­mi-sweet dark choco­late chips, low-fat yo­gurt, low-fat milk, and a sprin­kle of ce­re­al. This com­bi­na­tion pro­vides a slow re­lease of en­er­gy with great amounts of di­etary fi­bre, vi­t­a­mins and min­er­als.

2. Whole wheat, oat roti with veg­etable cho­ka in­clud­ing toma­to, bi­gain, pump­kin.

3. Pro­vi­sion with salt­fish and fresh sal­ad.

4. Dou­bles with cu­cum­ber from home.

5. Egg sand­wich with let­tuce, toma­toes, onion, cu­cum­ber, car­rots, sweet pep­pers and oth­er favourite veg­eta­bles.

6. Nu­tri­tious Smooth­ie with veg­eta­bles, such as kale, spinach, beets and fresh fruit, for ex­am­ple, pineap­ple, wa­ter­mel­on, with some nuts, seeds, oats for bal­ance.

The say­ing is that you should eat break­fast like a king, lunch like a queen, and din­ner like a pau­per. The main rea­son is that your me­tab­o­lism is high­er in the ear­li­er part of the day and de­creas­es through­out as we end the day with sleep. Over­all, a bal­anced break­fast is ben­e­fi­cial and should not be missed.

Can­di­da Khan, MSc RD al­so known as Di­di is a reg­is­tered di­etit­ian nu­tri­tion­ist.

She is al­so the CEO of Di­di's Nu­tri­tion Con­sul­tan­cy didis­nu­tri­tion­con­sul­tan­cy.com