Why Breakfast?
Scenario 1: The alarm screams, you torture yourself out of bed, still tired, quickly gulp a cup of coffee and rush off to work.
You arrive at work still tired, stressed, grumpy and in urgent need of another cup of coffee, or perhaps a chocolate or candy bar to get your energy kick started.
Sounds familiar? How will you cope with the challenges of the day? Scenario 2: You get up in the morning after a good night's sleep.
You're rested, cheerful and full of energy.
What kind of a day will you have? How will you respond to challenges, obstacles or a great work load? How do your children feel with cheerful parents ushering them off to school with firm but friendly authority and NO screaming and shouting? Is it possible? It certainly is desirable, very desirable.
How can we make this happen, though? Let's start at the beginning.
You get out of bed.
More likely than not you won't have had anything to drink or eat for 10 to 12 hours.
Children won't have drunk or eaten anything for 12 to 15 hours.
The order of the day, apart from washing and getting dressed, calls for breakfast.
Rice Krispies or cornflakes with milk or a slice of toast for the kids - if there is time - and a quick drink of sorts, all in a hurry, and then the race to get to school on time starts.
There usually isn't enough time for a proper breakfast for your, with or without kids.
A cup of coffee or a mug of tea, a slice of toast or a donut on the run, and your race is on.
Let's look at it another way.
Imagine you own a Ferrari, a beautiful high performance car with a very advanced, complex engine.
What kind of fuel would you put in? What kind of engine oil would you use? And when? Would you fill her up every now and then with a mixture suitable barely for 2-stroke engines, that is with junk? Would you fill her up when the fuel gauge hits the bottom and even then try to get an extra mile or two out of her? Would you chuck in any old oil as and when you remember or when the engine begins to sound a little 'off'? Or would you stick strictly to manufacturer's specifications and make sure not to run the tank too low so that the engine doesn't pick up the sludge from the bottom of the tank? Would you use high-grade, high performance engine oil and never allow the level to go below minimum? But isn't that what we do in the morning? Quickly chuck in any old thing as and when the time permits before we take our bodies on the racetrack of the day? We are meticulous in looking after our high performance, expensive car engines.
We know we have to because we, humans, have built it, and they cost a lot of money.
Yet our own engine, that is so complicated that we are not yet capable of reliably replacing even the most simple, primitive parts; our own engine that we don't really understand, we allow ourselves to run on empty, fill up knowingly with low grade, even damaging fuel, and think that this is OK.
How far would a Ferrari get on an empty tank? How far would you drive her when the red warning light for the oil starts flashing? Yet how far can you push yourself on empty? The problem is that we don't have a red warning light built in that flashes when our body dehydrates or starves.
We just carry on as if everything was perfect.
Allow me to stay with the Ferrari a little longer.
What would you do if you had a brand new one? Drive off the forecourt, put your foot down and go hell for leather? Or run it in very carefully as instructed? Not care about it or do your very best so that she will be guaranteed to reach max performance later on? It's obvious, isn't it.
Yet, as a society as a whole, and therefore individually as well, we don't give our children the opportunity to run in very carefully.
Rather, we let them run down early on.
We send them to school with inadequate fuel, encourage them to put junk into their little tanks, and then we are surprised that, for the first time in modern history, life expectancy of our children is actually falling.
A frightening thought.
So, let's do something to get our day off to the start in the morning that the super high performance engine that we are deserves.
Let's give ourselves the fuel we need to function properly.
Fuel for the body Unlike a car engine, your body is only ever switched off at the very end.
This means that we need to refuel all the time.
We certainly tick over when we sleep.
We breathe, perspire, our organs work, albeit at a calmer pace.
Our brain works digesting the impressions of the previous day.
At times our muscles won't relax properly.
They can be clenched, taught, occasionally our legs and arms twitch.
Our eyes move.
Our skin rejuvenates and repairs itself especially at night.
We are busy at night.
But we mostly think that because we sleep our body doesn't need anything.
That certainly is one delusion worth throwing over board right here and now.
Our body needs a whole host of nutrients, all the time.
It can do only so much from stored reserves.
Most of the fuel needs to be replenished several times a day.
No surprise really when we look at the very broad list of essential nutrients (essential means the body cannot do without, at least not for any length of time, and does not produce them itself; they must be obtained from the outside).
Here is what a well functioning body needs: daily optimally balanced nutrition; that is to say the right amount of:
A builder certainly needs more calories - derived from the right food groups - than an office clerk, an athlete will have different requirements than a breast feeding mother.
But we all need those nutrients daily if not several times daily.
What does all this have to do with breakfast? Balanced nutrition is obviously the foundation for a healthy breakfast -- the foundation of the foundation of the day, as it were.
You arrive at work still tired, stressed, grumpy and in urgent need of another cup of coffee, or perhaps a chocolate or candy bar to get your energy kick started.
Sounds familiar? How will you cope with the challenges of the day? Scenario 2: You get up in the morning after a good night's sleep.
You're rested, cheerful and full of energy.
What kind of a day will you have? How will you respond to challenges, obstacles or a great work load? How do your children feel with cheerful parents ushering them off to school with firm but friendly authority and NO screaming and shouting? Is it possible? It certainly is desirable, very desirable.
How can we make this happen, though? Let's start at the beginning.
You get out of bed.
More likely than not you won't have had anything to drink or eat for 10 to 12 hours.
Children won't have drunk or eaten anything for 12 to 15 hours.
The order of the day, apart from washing and getting dressed, calls for breakfast.
Rice Krispies or cornflakes with milk or a slice of toast for the kids - if there is time - and a quick drink of sorts, all in a hurry, and then the race to get to school on time starts.
There usually isn't enough time for a proper breakfast for your, with or without kids.
A cup of coffee or a mug of tea, a slice of toast or a donut on the run, and your race is on.
Let's look at it another way.
Imagine you own a Ferrari, a beautiful high performance car with a very advanced, complex engine.
What kind of fuel would you put in? What kind of engine oil would you use? And when? Would you fill her up every now and then with a mixture suitable barely for 2-stroke engines, that is with junk? Would you fill her up when the fuel gauge hits the bottom and even then try to get an extra mile or two out of her? Would you chuck in any old oil as and when you remember or when the engine begins to sound a little 'off'? Or would you stick strictly to manufacturer's specifications and make sure not to run the tank too low so that the engine doesn't pick up the sludge from the bottom of the tank? Would you use high-grade, high performance engine oil and never allow the level to go below minimum? But isn't that what we do in the morning? Quickly chuck in any old thing as and when the time permits before we take our bodies on the racetrack of the day? We are meticulous in looking after our high performance, expensive car engines.
We know we have to because we, humans, have built it, and they cost a lot of money.
Yet our own engine, that is so complicated that we are not yet capable of reliably replacing even the most simple, primitive parts; our own engine that we don't really understand, we allow ourselves to run on empty, fill up knowingly with low grade, even damaging fuel, and think that this is OK.
How far would a Ferrari get on an empty tank? How far would you drive her when the red warning light for the oil starts flashing? Yet how far can you push yourself on empty? The problem is that we don't have a red warning light built in that flashes when our body dehydrates or starves.
We just carry on as if everything was perfect.
Allow me to stay with the Ferrari a little longer.
What would you do if you had a brand new one? Drive off the forecourt, put your foot down and go hell for leather? Or run it in very carefully as instructed? Not care about it or do your very best so that she will be guaranteed to reach max performance later on? It's obvious, isn't it.
Yet, as a society as a whole, and therefore individually as well, we don't give our children the opportunity to run in very carefully.
Rather, we let them run down early on.
We send them to school with inadequate fuel, encourage them to put junk into their little tanks, and then we are surprised that, for the first time in modern history, life expectancy of our children is actually falling.
A frightening thought.
So, let's do something to get our day off to the start in the morning that the super high performance engine that we are deserves.
Let's give ourselves the fuel we need to function properly.
Fuel for the body Unlike a car engine, your body is only ever switched off at the very end.
This means that we need to refuel all the time.
We certainly tick over when we sleep.
We breathe, perspire, our organs work, albeit at a calmer pace.
Our brain works digesting the impressions of the previous day.
At times our muscles won't relax properly.
They can be clenched, taught, occasionally our legs and arms twitch.
Our eyes move.
Our skin rejuvenates and repairs itself especially at night.
We are busy at night.
But we mostly think that because we sleep our body doesn't need anything.
That certainly is one delusion worth throwing over board right here and now.
Our body needs a whole host of nutrients, all the time.
It can do only so much from stored reserves.
Most of the fuel needs to be replenished several times a day.
No surprise really when we look at the very broad list of essential nutrients (essential means the body cannot do without, at least not for any length of time, and does not produce them itself; they must be obtained from the outside).
Here is what a well functioning body needs: daily optimally balanced nutrition; that is to say the right amount of:
- Carbohydrates
- Protein
- Vitamins
- Minerals
- Fibre
- Fat
- Trace elements
- Amino acids
- Enzymes
- Herbs
- Water
A builder certainly needs more calories - derived from the right food groups - than an office clerk, an athlete will have different requirements than a breast feeding mother.
But we all need those nutrients daily if not several times daily.
What does all this have to do with breakfast? Balanced nutrition is obviously the foundation for a healthy breakfast -- the foundation of the foundation of the day, as it were.
