June 18, 2009 2:33 PM

Legal Remedies: Breakfast of Champions

Posted by Ed Shanahan

By Jim Thornton

Q: For the past few months, I've been getting up at 8, grabbing a Danish and coffee en route to the firm, skipping lunch, then engorging myself at night like a starving wolf. This dietary pattern feels...unhealthy. Is it?

A: Remember how your mom always used to warn you: Skip a decent breakfast and you're asking for a tidal wave of neuropeptide Y two hours after lunch, triggering intense cravings for State Fair elephant ears and similar species of sugary fat? Oh, wait. That was my mom. 

Anyhow, I am sure yours said something about the importance of starting each day off right with something decent to eat. Zulu warriors don't call breakfast indlakusasa, or "strength meal," for nothing.  It's a sobriquet for which modern researchers are finding no shortage of support.

"For many of us," says clinical nutrition author Wayne Callaway, MD, "breakfast probably is the most important meal of the day."

Pro-breakfast science, to be sure, has been around at least since 1972, when Drs. Nedra Belloc and Lester Breslow published a now famous study of seven health habits linked to longevity: eating breakfast, eating regular meals, eating moderately, abstaining from alcohol or using it in moderation, not smoking, exercising regularly, and sleeping 7 or 8 hours a night. Middle-aged adults with three or less of these habits had a life expectancy of 67 years, but those who had six or seven increased their life expectancy to 78--an 11-year jump. And because eating breakfast can help you avoid snacking and set you up for three regular meals a day, it's key to almost half of these beneficial habits.

Subsequent researchers have shown that a decent breakfast provides an array of benefits, from cranking up your metabolic rate all day, keeping weight in check, to enhancing your ability to think clearly and avoid a mid-morning descent into brain fog. 

A study of the federal School Breakfast Program, for instance, showed that kids who ate the school breakfast did significantly better on standardized performance tests than their peers who did not participate in the program. Though similar studies on adults haven't been conducted, nutritionists at Tufts University suggest that adults who skip breakfast "more than likely" will see some deterioration in their ability to concentrate and solve problems.   

If nothing else, says Jeanne Goldberg, Ph.D., RD, the principle investigator for the famous Food Guide Pyramid, "If you eat breakfast, you just don't get that gnawing feeling in your stomach later in the morning, that sense that you've bottomed out."

So, what makes for a decent breakfast?

In the sixteenth century, for instance, Queen Elizabeth I began each day with nothing but beef and beer. By the 1700s, affluent Scotsmen had added to this hashed and salted herring, three types of bread, coffee, tea, and Jamaican rum. Credit America's John Harvey Kellogg and C.W. Post for our culture's fixation on cereal grains, their preoccupation with the "digestive process" ushering forth the era of Wheaties, Raisin Bran, Cornflakes, and other tasty roughage that for so many of us define "real" breakfast food.

Beer and Jamaican rum aside, many nutritionists today concede there really is no formula for a perfect breakfast. Many fortified cereals can be excellent sources of nutrition, but so can a piece of low fat pizza.  What's key is to think of breakfast not as an isolated meal but rather one that fits in with, and indeed sets the tone for, your whole week's nutrition.  A few tips to consider:

First, estimate your body's fuel requirements via the Harris-Benedict Equation. This will give you your basal metabolic rate. If you're only modestly active, multiply this resting rate by 1.3 to get a realistic idea of what you actually burn. If you work out regularly, you can multiply the resting rate by 1.5.

Eat at least 25 percent of your calories at each meal, including breakfast. It sounds like your favorite meal is dinner, and it's fine to adopt a pattern of consuming 25 percent of your calories at breakfast, 25 percent at lunch, and 50 percent at dinner. Others may prefer splitting the day's allotment by thirds, while still others might like a 30 percent, 40 percent, 30 percent split.  No matter which pattern works best for you, says Callaway, if you can hold it steady for about three weeks and eat at reasonably consistent times, your appetite will naturally "lock on" to the routine.  At this point, you can forget about counting calories--your appetite will guide you like an auto pilot.

Keep a food diary at the start to keep your "asset allocation" or food types in good order--ideally, about 30 percent of total daily calories from fat; 15-20 percent from protein; and the rest from carbohydrates. Individual meals don't all need to fit this pattern. It's fine, for instance, to occasionally have a high-fat breakfast of bacon and eggs--just make sure you eat less fat later to compensate.

Replenish glycogen stores first. During sleep, your body is in a fasting state, and to fuel metabolism and brain function, it begins using up carbohydrates stored as glycogen. "When you wake up, your body still has plenty of fat to burn, but what you don't have is very much carbohydrate," explains Dr. James Hill, Ph.D., associate director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado in Denver.  "A high carbohydrate breakfast is usually the best recommendation."

Choose whole grains. When the wheat refining process was popularized in the 1930s, white bread became an instant status symbol.  But nutritionists now know that stripping the outer shell off grain deprives it of one of its most healthy components--fiber.  Check the ingredient list of your favorite cereal to make sure it is either whole grain or only partially refined.  Note: brown rice, rolled oats, whole wheat, and whole corn are all unrefined grains and make excellent choices.

Caffeinate your brain. If you can tolerate it, coffee or tea represent the most potent "mind-alerting" component of a typical breakfast. "People do perform substantially better on cognitive tests if they've had caffeine," says Judith Wurtman, Ph.D., author of Managing Your Mind and Mood Through Food.

Consider adding protein. Though not all nutritionists agree, Wurtman also believes that breakfast with at least 100 grams of protein--or about 3 ounces worth--can enhance mental functioning by providing the brain with a building block called tyrosine necessary for the production of dopamine and norepinepherine, two key neurotransmitters involved in mental alertness. This is especially important on days when you know you will have to concentrate deeply for extended periods of time.

Jim Thornton is a National Magazine Award–winning writer whose work has been published in such magazines as Men's Health, National Geographic Adventure, AARP: The Magazine, GQ, Backpacker, and Glamour. Thornton also is a master swimmer who blogs about the experience here.

Photo: iStock

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