Breakfast, It Should Be Mandatory
It’s the most important meal of the day!
No, seriously, it is the most important meal of any day of any living animal.
Quick breakfast facts:
-It’s a natural, caffeine/energy boost in our day. (Only if it’s a healthy, plant-strong, meal)
-It helps our body to start metabolizing, setting us up for a healthy digestion throughout our day.
-We just came from a 6-8 hour fast, it provides our bodies with nutrients we’ve lacked all night.
-Keeps a steady release of hormones and insulin to keep us on the up-and-up.
-If you bulk up in the morning, you’ll never binge or over-eat in the afternoon or night time when we have the least time remaining to digest the food we just ate.
-It provides kids (and adults) with healthy brain activity to process all that is learned at school. The bulk of school work happens in the morning. Energize your children with a healthy, plant-strong breakfast to be more attentive at school.
-If eaten every day, the less amount of caffeine or energy you’ll need to keep on going the rest of your day.
Last week at my Engine 2,28-Day Challenge at Whole Foods Market, Henderson, I spoke about breakfast and featured three easy and fulfilling dishes that can empower a plant-strong eater each morning. (For specific recipes, clink on the links) I shared Eat Right America’s Chocolate Smoothie which is a “green” smoothie filled with spinach, blueberries, flax seeds, and natural, unsweetened cocoa that is great for breakfast or even an after school or after workout snack. It provides tons of antioxidants from the blueberries and chocolate, omegas and fiber from the flax seeds, and potassium and vitamin c from the bananas and spinach. SCORE! Along with the smoothie, I served up WFMs Cocoa Almond Baked Breakfast Quinoa which is basically a plant-strong protein power bar. It’s amazing and easy to make. Filled with quinoa, hemp seeds and milk that provide the bar with tons of protein, dietary fiber, and essential fatty acids. You get your Omegas and complete protein in this amazing chocolate protein concoction. The best part about it is that the chocolate is not an overwhelming, super sugary, sweet flavor. You get the natural flavor of cocoa, my favorite, that provides us with much needed antioxidants! This recipe helps out the hardworking individual as well. You can make a large batch of these the beginning of your week and have a bar each and every day without all the work to follow it.
Then, I gave them a hot breakfast option. My own breakfast taco recipe. It’s my plant-strong tofu scramble made with Gimme Lean sausage (an oil-less, soy protein meat alternative), peppers, onions, mushrooms, and spinach served with WFM Henderson’s in-house made corn tortillas and their guacamole and salsa. Man, they took one bite and just by the looks on their faces, did not miss the oil, meat, or dairy one bit. Now the sausage alternative provided the dish with enough sodium that I didn’t need to add any other sodium replacer. (As a side note, what I always tell my students is that we definitely want to keep sodium levels below 200mg of sodium per serving but we also need to be aware of the ingredients we put in each recipe. I chose a higher sodium containing ingredient so then we have to watch the sodium content in the rest of the ingredients. It’s all about moderating our entire meal, not necessarily each item) This is my favorite way to serve up tofu scramble. The minute you start making tacos, you forget that it’s made with tofu and what you’re missing from a regular taco, and you just enjoy eating plant-strong!
Those are only three recipes that you can interchange your meal of champions with. The most important thing is that you eat a healthy, plant-strong breakfast. Trust me when I say, it’s my caffeine for the morning. It’s not only your “cup-of-joe” but it’s also a meal at the same time. It’s a win-win! Try it because your body needs it.
