Mediterranean Diet Breakfast
In Greece, they have a saying: “Eat like a king in the morning, like a lord at lunch and like a beggar at dinner”. This proverb stresses the importance of breakfast in our diet, and yet a lot of people still skip it as a meal.
Breakfast is the first meal we have after a long fast. The etymology of the word breakfast means literally “to break the fast”, meaning that it is the meal which interrupts the night fasting, i.e. the period of the night, during which we do not consume any food.
After 8-10 hours of sleeping without food, the energy reserves in our body have diminished and certainly our brain and body need “fuel” to function correctly.
The importance of breakfast is major, when we want to increase our efficiency at work and at school, as it seems that people who have eaten breakfast are more concentrated and more vigilant. On the other hand, people who don’t have breakfast tend to be more tired and lazy. This is due to the reduction of the blood glucose levels. We should also know that glucose is the food of the brain.
Unfortunately, a lot of people, young and older, don’t eat breakfast, either because they underestimate or ignore its value, or because they think that the daily stress and lack of time keep them from dedicating a few minutes of their day in their nutrition and in themselves. Many people think that having a large breakfast will make them gain weight. However, scientific studies disprove them, since they suggest that people who eat breakfast are more likely to lose weight and tend to keep this lost weight. On the other hand, skipping breakfast leads to excessive food intake later throughout the day, less control over the quantity and quality of the foods that are consumed, as well as wrong messages of satiety.
Breakfast is that meal of the day which should provide us the necessary energy to have a kick start in our day. Therefore, if you are interested in having a better performance at work or at school, a good breakfast will help you “wake up”. According to research, people who eat breakfast are more energetic and do better at tests or their work than those who skip breakfast. Furthermore, studies in children have shown that consumption of breakfast improve memory and have a positive effect in the processes required to retain new information. On the contrary, a hungry person can be apathetic, indifferent or even lazy, when assigned with difficult tasks. Adults and mostly children who skip breakfast are more likely to be obese, since they eat larger portions at lunch or tend to nibble snacks that are usually unhealthy and rich in fat and calories.
Impressive findings of many studies show that people who have breakfast make more balanced choices for their diet throughout the day. Specifically, it has been shown that the percentage of fat they take is significantly lower. These traits of a balanced diet where also apparent in laboratory test – people who did not have breakfast had higher concentrations of blood cholesterol.