Which is the healthier breakfast?

Breakfast #1: orange juice and a low-fat blueberry muffin
Breakfast #2: half a grapefruit and one chicken sausage omelet with cheese and veggies

The winner? Breakfast #2 wins by a landslide!

Let me tell you about breakfast choice #1.  First of all, it is about 95% carbohydrates – great for spiking insulin, though quickly digested. I’m not necessarily anti-carb, but I do have a beef (ha-ha, grass fed!) with those extreme low-carb fad diets that eliminate entire food groups.

Choice #1 is bad because it is better to eat a balance of carbs, protein and fats for breakfast. Don’t be deceived – there is absolutely NOTHING healthy about a low-fat blueberry muffin! Muffins are usually made of refined sugar and flour (which breaks down just as fast as sugar in your body), but should labelled “junk food” rather than “low fat.”  Remember, foods labeled low fat aren’t necessarily healthy for you. Breakfast #1 will be sure to promote fat storage via the insulin surge you would get from this meal, and would also leave you starving again about an hour later.

Breakfast  #2, on the other hand, has a near perfect balance of quality protein, healthy carbs and necessary fats.  The result? Your appetite is satisfied; your body and mind functioning properly.  Much easier to do when you start the day off with a huge diversity of vitamins, minerals, and trace nutrients. Also, don’t forget that whole eggs are healthier than egg whites!

Which is the healthier lunch?

Lunch #1: a breaded chicken breast tossed salad
Lunch #2: a roast beef and swiss sandwich with tomato on whole grain bread

These two options are a little tricky. At first, it might appear both lunches are equally healthy.  The seemingly healthy word “salad” might even fool you into believing that lunch #1 is healthier. Well, lunch #2 is the easy winner here. Why?

The “breaded” chicken in the salad is the culprit for destroying a healthy lunch.  Any time you read or heard the word “breaded,” you can almost guarantee it means deep fat fried in deadly artery clogging, belly fattening hydrogenated oils (trans fats), which have been implicated recently as THE main culprit in heart disease and many other degenerative diseases. Now, unless the breaded chicken specifically indicates it was baked – or you bake it yourself – then it is sure to be deep fat friend in unhealthy and dangerous hydrogenated oils.

Knowing fully what these artificially produced industrial trans fats do to you internally, you would turn away and never let something deep fat friend pass through your lips to do damage on your insides!

However, lunch #2 is put together with mostly wholesome nourishing real food – real meat, real cheese, real tomato and real grains. Thankfully, you’ll find no industrially produced oil, artificially altered under high heat and high pressure, flushed with hexane solvents, deodorants, and bleaching chemicals like the oil that is soaked into that breaded chicken breast.

There is some room for improvement in lunch #2:

  • Replace roast beef with grass fed beef
  • Replace whole-grain bread with sprouted grain bread

Sprouted grain breads are just simply more nutritious than whole grain breads. They are able to deliver the nutrition to your digestive system because the nutrition hasn’t been stripped away by processing. If you are choosing “whole grain” breads, be aware that whole grain breads that aren’t 100% whole grain.  Some companies label their bread whole grain, but the first ingredient might still be refined wheat flour (which is a no-no if you want to lose fat).

How did you do on the quiz!  You get HIGH scores just for playing – and because know you know how to put a healthy meal together! Include  quality protein, healthy carbs and necessary fat to make sure you are making healthy food choices to put into your body! Stay away from the “breads” – breaded chicken and whole-grain bread.  Instead, choose sprouted grain and sprouted cows!  Just kidding – eat grass fed beef, if possible.

For more detailed information on healthy breakfast, lunch and meal balancing, the insulin process, healthy fats, healthy carbs, problems with trans fats, and other nutritional strategies that will

make you lean and mean, grab a copy of the internationally best-selling book The Truth About Six Pack Abs.

By Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer
Author of best-selling program:  The Truth about 6-Pack Abs

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