> I never really learned what is considered a healthy breakfast.
one of the big problems in the standard american diet is that we treat breakfast like a dessert.
1. cereal has around 15-30 grams of sugar in addition to various artificial flavors and additives.
2. pancakes and waffles? an irresponsible carb bomb that you douse in syrup and whipped cream.
3. breakfast sausage is basicly low quality meat mixed with fat. at least by itself its not high in sugar but then people normally have it with pancakes.
4. granola? na, more sugar.
Reality is that almost all "breakfast foods" are junk.
my advice is to steak to black coffee and a slice of fish or steak for most people. I like to have black coffee and sardines. seems to keep my mood stable througout the day.
Mine is a bowl of old fashion oats, frozen mixed fruit (I like a blueberry/blackberry mix), and maybe some non-fat plain greek yogurt and/or a glass a of plain soy milk.
Alternatively, a couple of scrambled eggs with a piece of toast and a bananna is fairly healthy.
A fried egg on an English muffin also isn't a terrible way to start the day.
Target ~400 cals, Try and get some protein and fiber in there. Watch out for saturated fats and high sodium (see the DASH diet for tips). If you are diabetic or risk diabetes, check out the glycemic index and shoot for low GI foods.
That'd be my advice (I'm not a doctor, what I'm suggesting could be 1000% wrong.)
I used a CGM recently. I tried breakfast as oatmeal with blueberries and mixed in with peanut butter. It spikes my blood sugar outside the "normal range". I treat oatmeal as once a week treat to avoid food boredom.
The oatmeal was a "big bowl" variety from a packet. I heard rolled oats might be better but it's a hassle to cook.
Most days breakfast is scrambled eggs (3 eggs), spinach, cheese. Sometimes I add tuna or avocado for variety. That keeps things stable.
Yeah that tracks. In the mornings your body is still in sleep mode so carb intake will take longer to be absorbed. If you have diabetes you need more insulin and a longer time for it to have affect. So for sure eating slow release carbs will help with the peak. Eating fats like cheese/avocado/oil will dampen the peak as well, eggs have 1% carbs and weighs almost nothing.
Just pointing out that the peak is just how the body works.
The packet probably was rolled oats. The other main option is steel cut, which take longer to cook. When I used to eat steel cut oats for breakfast, I used a rice cooker with a timer so it would be ready when I woke up. On the weekend, I'd use milk instead of water since I had plenty of time to wait for it to cook instead of setting it up the night before, which made using milk a bit of a risk.
I think part of the problem is we don't really know what a healthy diet looks like. We can point to what is probably unhealthy: eating tons of sugar filled items is probably bad, eating a lot of fried food is at least questionable, but beyond that we really don't know. The research is either poorly done, impossible to do, or you can find studies that go both ways.
I mean a healthy diet is a variety of fruits and vegetables, with a decent supplement of whole grains and occasional lean meats and eggs. Minimally processed as much as possible - whole ingredients should be the majority of calories.
The details don’t matter so much, as long as you get a variety and generally stick to the above guidelines.
I think you can judge how healthy a diet is by how many people get diseases, malnutrition or premature death as a result of a diet, and almost nobody is going to suffer because of that diet plan above.
I agree, it’s a trick question because no food is healthy by itself, foods are only healthy as part of a whole. And as long as your foods usually fit with the basic standard advice, then you’re eating healthy foods.
If you have cheese as a large component of almost every meal, then you’re deviating a lot from the basic advice, so it’s not healthy. If you have a bit of cheese on your breakfast of eggs and toast a couple times per week, then it’s healthy.
What's your protein intake with that diet though? A person with 80kg needs around 120-160g of protein a day (depending on activity etc), that seems tricky if the source of your protein is non-animal based.
Does he need that much? I'm pretty sure 5-6 generations ago the most muscular and the strongest man in my region ate turnips and grains with the occasional meat. The only other big source of meat were beans and realistically people at the time didn't eat more then 50-70 grams a day of them.
Eating meat everyday is a very recent development. Why we suddenly need so much protein that we struggle to find it in a basic food that is more rich and varied then a few hundred years ago?
The current recommendation is in this region, yes. The bare minimum is 0.8g per kg. But that is survival mode.
I am generally not a huge fan of the historical line of thinking. 6 generations ago you died significantly earlier with not a great health along the way. It is a very recent development to live to (avg) 83. Would the strongest man in your region perform at a high level if he wasn't doing manual labour and died at 95?
even if im buying eggs from the most expensive farm here (a local bio/organic farm syndicate which delivers only the city here), i pay only 80 euro cents, and these are coming from a farm where you can literally select that one specific chicken to produce "your eggs".
where do you you live? this would be aronud 1,60EUR - this is not cheap but by far the highest quality you can buy across the whole conutry.
Porridge with prunes, pears and cinnamon in the winter.
Fresh fruit or high-protein granola with kefir, fruit and a tiny drizzle of honey in the Summer.
Sometimes it'll be very high on protein, but also on fats: bacon (back, UK-style), sausage and egg.
The key is to get away from ultra-processed food, and I'm Type 2 diabetic so I want to reduce the amount of sugar and carbs I have. For me, I normally feel fructose > lactose > carbs > sucrose > desxtrose, and often replace lactose (dairy) with non-dairy equivalents, or make sure it has some other benefit (like kefir).
I want to make sure I feel full through to lunchtime, so protein is useful. I don't mind some carbs, if it means I have something I enjoy and don't feel I need to snack mid-morning.
TLDR: I avoid breakfast cereals (other than some high-protein granolas), add fruits like prunes, pears, maybe banana, and I don't have bread or other ultra-processed foods.
mine is also simple, 6 eggs, sometimes with a toast on the size and tuna and some fruits. been eating that for 12 years or so (eggs dont cost much here).
My doctor's advice (which is also official government advice for high cholestorol) was two egg yellows max every week - that includes any foods that use egg yellows.
Egg whites you have more leeway and theoretically one could use 6 egg whites every day but that would include heavy exercise.
Yes, there are indications that for some reasons eggs are better for you, than their cholesterol level should indicate. But it’s nowhere near “proven”. And that that high cholesterol is fine, is not even there. Currently, it’s still better to avoid high cholesterol meals. All of them.
