Wednesday 13 May 2015

Are you getting it in the morning?

If this is your usual though process in the morning then perhaps you should read on..."Cereal, milk, eat, door" or perhaps "toast, butter, door".

Protein intake at breakfast should be given more consideration. This is especially true as the older we get the less we can synthesize dietary amino acids (net protein utilisation) and the more we need to retain muscle mass to reduce the effects of muscle loss with age (sarcopenia at 3-5% per decade after the age of 30). Where participating in regular physical exercise the requirement increases to enable adaptations that promote fitness. And you should be participating in regular physical exercise.

After an overnight sleep induced fast your available protein pool (nitrogen balance) will be in a depleted state, meaning that one of the first stages of malnutrition - catabolism (muscle and lean tissue breakdown) - will have started and the anabolic (muscle regeneration or building) process can not continue. For this reason a regular protein intake in line with your nutritional requirements at intervals of 3-4 hours is recommended for strength and conditioning adaptations to occur.  Grass fed beef, nuts, free range eggs, fish, free range chicken etc make for appropriate breakfast choices to support lean tissue health.

Simply having a processed cereal and/or toast is a recipe for simply surviving not thriving, the milk, butter and fortified products will just about save you from complete malnutrition but this is a weak choice for sustained health over a lifetime. Many people also turn to healthy juices and smoothies for a quick breakfast, there are too many permutations to vilify juices and smoothies but they aren't all created equal. Adding oils, fats, protein, fibre etc will generally lead to sustained energy whereas omitting these things will do just the opposite. Blood glucose from sugar and insulin spikes with troughs do not set you up for sustained energy throughout the day and they generally lead to increased body fat and reduced lean muscle.

I recommend variety for breakfast, by all means have your usual choices but break it up a bit and add in protein options with reduced sugars and carbohydrates, unless of course you're going to be using it for exercise in the next couple of hours.