DO YOU SKIP BREAKFAST?

                                                           

Breakfast is often considered an essential part of a healthy diet. Breakfast’, our first meal of the day should be a combination of carbohydrates, protein, and  fibre. It should also include fruits, whole grains, and good fats. Some schools go as far as serving their pupils breakfast in the morning. However, some people cannot tolerate breakfast, while others complain that they do not have time for breakfast, don’t feel hungry or that they are on a diet.

Is it really beneficial or healthy to skip breakfast?

There are some difficulties in trying to answer this question. One of the difficulties is in defining what breakfast actually means. A research defined breakfast as food eaten before 10 am in the morning, which means that anyone that eats after 10 am are considered as having skipped breakfast.

Another problem is that the food considered as appropriate for breakfast differs from country to country.

BENEFITS OF EATING BREAKFAST

It is regarded as the most important meal of the day. It kick starts the body after a long period of inactivity. It prepares you for the rest of the day. It is said to be part of a healthy lifestyle, improves our memory and improves our health. Breakfast provides us with the much needed energy for the rest of the day. Taking a healthy breakfast makes you more approachable and easy to relate with as breakfast skippers are said to be cranky. Eating breakfast helps our metabolism. Our metabolism tends to slow down when we sleep. Taking a healthy breakfast in the morning helps to jumpstartyour metabolism to start burning calories from the beginning of the day instead of the middle of the day. Eating breakfast helps us lose weight because you don’t need to snack unnecessarily on high calorie snacks. If we are involved in physical activity, it gives us more strength and endurance. Breakfast saves us from hunger and eating too much throughout the day. It also reduces our bad cholesterol level. It provides our brain with the energy it needs to work with early. Eating breakfast helps improve cognitive performance, test scores, and achievement scores in students.

WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER SKIP BREAKFAST.

Inspite of the many reasons people give for skipping breakfast, here are reasons why you should never skip breakfast.

·         Some studies carried out suggests  that skipping breakfast might expose a person to vascular diseases such as heart attacks.

·         It leads to obesity because of unhealthy snacking and overeating in subsequent meals.

·         If we delay our first meal of the day until midday, our body goes into survival mode and start storing calories which in turn increases our weight.

·         Skipping breakfast disrupts blood sugar balance and insulin output.

·         It triggers a bad eating habit. Because of hunger pangs by midday, we may be forced into taking junk and processed foods which are packed full of calories and not at all good for our health.

·         Heart disease, osteoporosis, irritability, mood swings are some of the health conditions associated with skipping breakfast.

·         Inability to concentrate. After sleeping for hours on an empty stomach, skipping breakfast can make it harder to concentrate and remember things.

·         It will make you to lack energy. Since you haven’t eaten for hours, your body lacks the energy needed and leaves you feeling tired and weak.

·         It is a sign of an unhealthy lifestyle. Breakfast skippers are less likely to care about their health. They are more likely to smoke, drink, and do no exercises, unlike those that do eat breakfast.

·         Skipping breakfast leads to a higher body mass which is not really healthy.

·         It makes a person lose necessary nutrients into the body.

·         It takes a longer time to carry out simple tasks.