Should high-calorie foods be eaten for breakfast? 

How to eat breakfast? This question must be a “soul question” in many people’s minds. As the saying goes, “eat well in the morning, eat full at noon, and eat less at night”, so does “eating well” mean eating high-calorie food and being extravagant and delicate? The following set of quick questions and answers will help you “decode” breakfast.

Q: What are high-calorie foods?

answer:

The calories (also called energy) provided by food to the body mainly come from the three major nutrients: carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Any food with high content of these three nutrients can be called high-calorie food.

In daily food, livestock and poultry meat, oils, nuts, refined grains are high-calorie foods compared to vegetables, fruits and coarse grains.

In addition, various fried, grilled, candy and beverage foods often have more oil and sugar (i.e. fat and carbohydrates) added during the processing process, so they are also high-calorie foods.

Q: Do high-calorie foods have high nutritional value?

answer:

Based on the concept of nutrition, food has three main functions for the body: one is to provide energy, the second is to form and repair body tissues, and the third is to regulate physiological functions. The latter two functions are mainly played by nutrients such as proteins, lipids, vitamins and minerals.

When we evaluate the nutritional value of food, we don’t just calculate the energy level, but judge it from the perspective of nutritional density.

Nutritional density refers to the concentration of nutrients contained in food per unit of energy. When different foods provide the same amount of energy, the one that provides more nutrients has a higher nutritional density. For example, compared with rice, the nutritional density of multi-grain rice is higher; compared with sugar water and fruit juice, the nutritional density of fruit juice is higher; compared with fat meat and lean meat, the nutritional density of lean meat is higher.

When food supply is sufficient, energy is often not lacking, but rather in excess. However, some specific nutrients may be lacking, such as calcium, iron, vitamin D, vitamin A, etc. Therefore, we should pursue high nutritional density rather than just high calories .

Q: Should high-calorie foods be eaten for breakfast?

answer:

Most of the energy that the human body obtains from food (60%-70%) is used to maintain basal metabolism, which is the energy consumption that is carried out 24 hours a day and is necessary to maintain the most basic life activities of the human body. Since energy consumption is not concentrated in a certain period of time, there is no need to concentrate high-calorie foods in a certain meal. Considering eating habits, it is more appropriate to distribute the total energy of the whole day in three meals at a ratio of 30%, 40% and 30%.

For the elderly, children, pregnant women, nursing mothers or the weak, the intake of regular meals may be limited, and the frequency of meals can be increased appropriately, adopting three meals with two snacks or three meals with three snacks, with small meals and frequent meals to ensure adequate food intake .

Q: How should I eat breakfast?

answer:

Eating a good breakfast does not mean that the breakfast should be luxurious and exquisite, but that the nutrition should be comprehensive and balanced.

Breakfast food should be diverse and well-matched. It should include at least three of the following: cereals and potatoes, meat and eggs, milk and beans, and fruits and vegetables, especially cereals and potatoes. If breakfast includes the above four categories, we can consider it nutritionally adequate; if it includes three categories, it can be said that the nutrition is relatively adequate; if it includes less than three categories, the nutrition of this breakfast is insufficient.

In terms of specific operations, whole grains such as millet, corn, oats, and whole wheat flour can be directly used as staple foods. People with hyperlipidemia and overweight and obesity should choose low-fat milk, skim milk and its products; people with lactose intolerance can consider drinking low-lactose milk, soy milk or yogurt. Choose more tender leafy vegetables, and fruits or vegetables with harder textures can be crushed and juiced for consumption; vegetables can be made into stuffing, chopped vegetables, and made into delicious meals with other foods (such as vegetable porridge, dumplings, buns, egg custard, etc.) and mixed for consumption.