Non-Processed Breakfasts

I put blueberries in my oatmeal while it was cooking, and it tasted like a blueberry muffin. Yum! I have done this before, but I forgot how good it was. After cooking, I added a more blueberries on top and a spoonful of cashew butter.

Blueberry Muffin Oatmeal

• 1/3 cup oats
• 2/3 cup water
• one medium banana
• handful of blueberries
• ~1 T cashew butter (or nut butter of choice)

It was so good I ate it again the next day, but with almond butter! 

This morning, I was craving savory, so I made some cage-free eggs over easy and put them on top of Bob’s Red Mill Organic Creamy Buckwheat Cereal with a generous amount of salt and pepper.

Picture taken after I had started eating it

 

Just for fun, I put my breakfast into a calorie counter and found that the nutrition was strikingly similar to my favorite “fast-food” breakfast: the Starbuck’s Spinach Egg White Wrap.

Tyler’s Eggs and Buckwheat Cereal

• 280 calories
• 10 grams fat
• 32 grams carbs
• 0 grams sugar
• 3 grams fiber
• 17 grams protein

 

Starbuck’s Spinach Egg White Wrap

• 280 calories
• 10 grams fat
• 33 grams carbs
• 4 grams sugar
• 6 grams fiber
• 18 grams protein

 

While the Starbucks wrap has more fiber (I’m guessing from the wheat wrap, which has 29 ingredients btw), it also has 4 grams of sugar. For a meal that doesn’t taste sweet at all, I think this is a lot. I would like to save my sugar intake for chocolate, thanks. I think that added sugars is one of the biggest problems with processed foods. Even if you don’t eat “sweets” you are still getting sugar in your diet (often in the form of HFCS), and you wouldn’t even realize it unless studied nutrition labels all the time.

Speaking of processed foods and breakfast, I subscribe to Spark People newsletters, and recently there was an article about whether it is better to skip breakfast or eat a doughnut for breakfast. [Warning. Rant ahead.] The author said that if these were your only choices, you should eat the doughnut. She claimed that your body’s metabolic rate will stay the same as if you were sleeping if you don’t eat breakfast and then slow down even more until you eat (um…what?!). She also said that one doughnut will not do too much caloric damage (true, I guess) and that skipping breakfast all together will cause you to crave a high fat, high calorie lunch (hmm…not in my experience).

Now, I think that breakfast is awesome and that more people should eat it, but there are so many things wrong with her argument. First of all, what she said about metabolism is absolutely ridiculous. I think that dieters worry way too much about their bodies going into starvation mode when it takes days of fasting or extreme caloric reduction to see any measurable effects on metabolism [source]. A few hours certainly would not have a significant effect.

Also, I do not like the assumption that when people get too hungry, they become incapable of making healthy food choices.  I actually crave healthier foods when I am hungry because I know that healthy foods are generally more filling and that I will feel satisfied, not sick, after eating a large healthy meal. When I am not hungry, but wanting to eat, is when I usually crave things like cheese and chocolate. And junk food with lots of sugar and fat is addicting, so if I were to eat a doughnut or cinnamon roll or waffles for breakfast, I would be more likely to crave junk throughout the day than if I skipped breakfast.

So in my opinion, you should skip breakfast in lieu of a doughnut if these were your only two choices. Worst case scenario, you would be hungry for a couple hours, and then you would eat a big healthy lunch and feel great. Or if you really want the doughnut, eat it. Everything in moderation, but don’t think that you are doing your body any favors. It’s the same as having ice cream or cookies for breakfast. Just because breakfast is important doesn’t mean that anything for breakfast is a better choice than not having it. What do you think?

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