Breakfast is considered to be the most important meal of the day.  A healthy a.m. meal can give you energy, satisfy your appetite, and set the stage for smart decisions all day long. Ideally, a healthy breakfast should be a blend of all the needed carbs with fibre and some good protein.
It kickstarts the body into producing the enzymes needed to metabolise fat, helping to shed the pounds.
In fact, a number of breakfast foods you’re probably already eating pack big-time benefits for your health. Here are must haves of any healthy and nutritious breakfast.
1. Whole grains:
Every whole grain in your diet helps! There are many delicious and highly nutritious whole grains to choose from, so adding whole grains to your diet needn’t be daunting. Oats, Brown rice, Quinoa, Barley, Kamut are some of the whole grains when consumed helps with weight-balancing efforts, keep you feeling full, and add taste and variety to your meals.
A healthy breakfast should have at least 5 grams of fiber. Whole grain cereals and breads made from whole grains are good source of fiber. Addition of nuts and seeds like a spoonful ground flax seeds or chopped nuts will add nice crunch in your breakfast and give you more energy, fiber and protein. You can also Stock some healthy granola bars for morning rush hours.
2. Proteins:
Just like fiber, a healthy breakfast needs to have atleast 5 grams of protein. Proteins are the building blocks of life. The body needs protein to repair and maintain itself. proteins catalyse reactions in our bodies, transport molecules such as oxygen, keep us healthy as part of the immune system and transmit messages from cell to cell.
Lean meats like ham, turkey, bacon, low fat or nonfat dairy product like milk, yogurt, cottage cheese can be included in your breakfast to get good amount of protein. Soy products like soy milk, tofus are also high in protein.
3. Fruits and fruit juice:
along with fiber and proteins, Many of working people tend to skip breakfast. It is better to stock fruits like apple, orange, bananas, berries, melons so that you can grab couple of fruits and get going. Instead of drinking readymade juice which may contains preservatives and lot of sugar, make fresh juice at home. This will facilitate you to combine different fruits to make mixed fruit juice.
It will provide your body different vitamins and other nutrients. Another helpful benefit of fruits and fruit juices is their ability to promote detoxification in the human body. Fruits help to cleanse the body, especially those with high acid levels. Tomatoes, pineapples, and citruses such as oranges, red grapefruits, and lemons are known for their detoxifying properties.
Freshly squeezed juices from fruits and vegetables are excellent sources of minerals and vitamins that catalyse chemical reactions occurring in the body. These enzymes also produce the energy needed for digestion, absorption, and conversion of food into body tissues. An increased intake of fruit and vegetable juices ensures that the body will efficiently absorb more minerals and vitamins.
To make vegetable juice, vegetables like tomato, carrot or beetroot are great option to energize your body with different lot of vitamins and minerals.
4. Smoothies:
Smoothies are such a great inventions of fantastic drink which is so delicious and good to our health as most of them contain fiber antioxidants, vitamins and minerals as they are made up of fresh fruits. There are many smoothie products having all types of flavors, health benefits, ingredients and many more. Smoothies are versatile and easy to make. Smoothies made with non-fat yogurt and any kind of fruit like banana, all kinds of berries, avocado, cantaloupe, orange, apple etc by adding little honey, sugar, sweetener. Yogurt can be replaced by milk or soy-milk.
– Tanvi Shah
5 Comments