Ideal Breakfast

To most people, breakfast is a meal that’s usually taken for granted. They eat breakfast if they have time and they don’t if they don’t have time or they don’t feel like eating one. And to most people who say they eat breakfast, this usually means a cup or two of coffee and bread. For your best interest and information, I will consider three kinds of breakfast in this post.

Let’s see what a breakfast of bread and coffee has to offer you in terms of percentages of the common nutrients a normal adult would need for the day. Remember, a good breakfast should provide about ¼ to 1/3 of most of the nutrients the body needs for the day.

Except for iron, all other nutrients barely reached 10 percent of the recommended dietary allowances. And worse yet, vitamins A and C are not supplied.

Now, let’s see what happen if we add an egg, 2 pieces of boiled banana, and a teaspoon of margarine and just 1 tablespoon of evaporated milk to the hot drink.

Note the addition of vitamins A and C and the percentages of all nutrients now above 10, with some at 25 more percent of the recommended dietary allowance of the nutrients. The addition of banana is responsible for the vitamin C plus a little of each of the rest of the nutrients; egg for the iron, protein, vitamin A, calcium, thiamine and riboflavin; and the margarine (the brand that has been fortified with thiamine) for the thiamine or vitamin B1.

For hard working people, this breakfast can still be modified to give higher percentage of the different nutrient requirements. By adding 1 more cup of rice and replacing  the egg with mongo beans guisado with 1 tablespoon *malunggay leaves, almost all nutrients are satisfied up to 30 percent and more of the recommended dietary allowance for the day.

*Malunggay leaves are popularly used in Filipino soups and broths especially tinola. The leaves are said to increase lactation in nursing mothers. Filipinos like to say that malunggay is “the most nutritious plant in the world.”  It is rich in vitamins A and C and iron.

A good breakfast, therefore, will provide you with a generous supply of the needed nutrients, which in turn will assure you of the following benefits:

1. Helps make one alert, efficient and resistant to fatigue.
2. Stabilizes the blood sugar level, so there is less desire to overeat later on in the day.
3. Increase sense of well-being.
4. Better work performance, better concentration on one’s work and studies (for students).
5. Decrease the desire to eat between meals.
6. Better weight control.
7. Better disposition.