The Value of Eating a Good Breakfast
Posted by: yonaturals in YoNaturals Healthy Vending BusinessThis post was contributed by Laura Rayburn for YoNaturals Organic and Natural Vending Business based in San Diego, California.
Perhaps your mother always told you that starting your day off with a good breakfast is the key to a great day. And she was right. The value of a nutritious morning meal can not be understated. Some research even points to a link between skipped breakfasts and elevated cholesterol levels and a lesser sensitivity to insulin. This is in addition to the general impact on one’s daily caloric intake since people who skip breakfast also tend to eat more calories throughout the day.
What foods should be included in a nutritious breakfast then? Whole grain cereals are a great place to start, especially if lowering your cholesterol is a primary concern. In fact, whole grain cereals stand out as a good breakfast food no matter what your health concern is. The other good news is that it’s also quick to prepare for those of us who find ourselves in a rush to get out the door in the morning.
Dr. Hamid R. Farshchi, a researcher at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, has delved deeper into this question of breakfast eating to figure out what kind of impact a skipped breakfast meal can have on an individual, and he began by first assembling a study group of 10 young and normal-weight women. One group was instructed to eat bran flakes with low-fat milk for breakfast, whereas the second group was asked to skip breakfast and eat the bran flakes around noon instead. Both groups were allowed two meals, two snacks, and one cookie during the rest of the day.
At the end of this short study, Dr. Farshchi’s team gave the women milkshakes in order to measure their metabolic responses. After taking blood samples and comparing those samples to samples taken earlier, the researchers noted that the women who had been skipping breakfast for the past two weeks had higher levels of cholesterol and a poorer response to insulin after ingesting the milkshake.
The women in the breakfast-free group also reported generally higher calorie intakes during the study, and although they showed no sign of a change in body weight, this may be attributable to the length of the study. Dr. Farschi noted that a longer study would need to be undertaken to determine the relationship between skipping breakfast and gaining weight.
One of the most interesting things about this study was that the timing of the meals seemed to have a large impact on the women’s metabolic rate and her cholesterol levels, as both groups ate the same things, just at different times of day. With this knowledge in hand, it becomes evident even to non-scientific types that eating a good breakfast is an important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. So eat up, to your health. Cheers from YoNaturals!