The most important meal of the day

Breakfast- everyone knows it is the most important meal of the day. It sets you up for a day of working, learning, cleaning baby poo off your sofa cushions or whatever takes your fancy.

Why then do most people (sweeping generalisation) eat a rubbish breakfast?
Cereal or toast are the staples of most households and then any of the other obvious options are no better; ready made packets of mini pancakes, tea cakes, hot cross buns, pastries- all pretty rubbish for us.
Then there are things you think are good for your family, like those instant porridge pots, ace idea…until you look at the label

This is the nutritional info for one sachet of Lidls golden syrup flavoured porridge, it has a homely looking packet with a bag of oats on it which glosses over the fact there are 5 teaspoons of sugar (1tsp is 4 grams, I have checked) in every sachet!

If you start the day eating something like that then by mid morning you are going to be hungry again, your body would have used up all the quickly released carbs from the sugar and you will need a pick-me-up…and often you will end up grabbing something quick and convenient like a biscuit or two or a cereal bar which will just repeat the process.

I am not setting myself on some podium here! I was eating a lot of this stuff myself until I started to read labels properly (not those instant oats because they are rank and real oats cost like 100 times less). It was only one day when I was buttering a cinnamon and raisin bagel and happened to glance at the packaging and noticed it contained 16grams of sugar, that I started to look into it more.

Nearly all of the cereals available have sugar in them, some of the healthiest sounding granolas are as bad for you as Coco pops are, so you need to be really careful with cereals. Even plain cornflakes have sugar in.
We are now only buying Weetabix, Cornflakes, Rice crispies (cheaper supermarket own brand ones sometimes have less sugar) or Shredded wheat.
We are eating a lot less cereal and toast though (unless it is wholemeal with some form of nut butter) and trying to eat more filling breakfasts to stop snacking in the morning.

If (like me) you always feel the urge to snack then put together a little pot of nuts to take out with you or some rice cakes…or like I did today for Tilds for after playgroup- pack a hard boiled egg and some fruit.

Anyway back to breakfasts.

Porridge needs to become your best friend. I know porridge can be a bit boring, and the idea of unsweetened porridge even more so but think outside the box a bit. The picture above is ‘Special raspberry sprinkle porridge’- named by Matilda.
To make it I cook my oats in half coconut milk (the watery milk replacement type not the tinned kind) and half water…you could use all coconut milk but it is about £1.70 a bottle!
When it is cooked throw in about 15 frozen raspberries (frozen raspberries obviously keep well and are a hell of a lot cheaper than fresh ones so perfect for things like this, plus raspberries are a low sugar fruit and by just putting in a handful for a few people then you aren’t eating a huge amount of sugar first thing in the morning…yes fruit is sugar, sorry)

The raspberries will break up and make your porridge nice and pink.
Once that has happened pour in to bowls and sprinkle a load of dessicated coconut on top and finish it by grating dark chocolate over it all (85% or above choc will contain very low amounts or no sugar)

Mmm.

Ok one more breakfast whilst I have time

Poached duck eggs, grilled peppers and spinach cooked in garlic all on top of some toasted sourdough bread with soft cheese.
I don’t think any of that needs explaining!…I bought the bread by the way.

So a few low sugar breakfast dos and don’ts-

Don’t

*Buy sugary cereals
*Buy things like mini pancakes
* Sorry but get rid of the jam and the nutella…we have got some no added sugar jam which I will have a teeeeeny smear of occasionally.
*No more fruit juice, you are basically just drinking Fructose.
Fructose is the worst and most sneaky kind of sugar,  because our bodies do no register it! This means we eat and eat or drink fructose and do not get full from it. Sarah Wilson (I quit sugar) says ‘The way fructose is converted in our bodies means it is not used straight away as energy but converted directly to fat’…so this happens with all fructose but even more so with fruit juices and high sugar fruit smoothies as you drink them so fast. Christ I went off on one there!

What else hmm

Don’t…
* Eat any flavoured or sweetened yoghurts
* Don’t overdo it with adding dried fruits or honey to breakfast- they are both almost as sugary as table sugar! The good qualities of honey that everyone raves about only make up about 2% of it and the rest is basically sugar.

Ok do…

* Make friends with porridge
* Pick plain cereals
* Have whole milk (if you have dairy milks) as fat is actually good for you and stops sugar cravings…that is a whole different topic for another time!
* Eat eggs…or if you don’t eat eggs then eat things like scrambled tofu
* Embrace savoury breakfasts- cheeses, fish, lean meats (yes I am vegi but the world oddly doesn’t revolve around me)
* Buy low sugar bread and things like Rye bread
* Enter the exciting world of nut and seed butters
* Eat pancakes! Just make them sugar free 🙂 I will post recipes, or you could be dead clever and google it.

Right I need to tend to a snotty whining Matilda so I need to stop writing about breakfast. I will post a nice cake recipe later on.

Thanks for reading (p.s. I have not got time to proof read this, we will all have to get over any grammatical errors)
Amy x