For anyone in need of a memory boost, breakfast is indeed the most important meal of the day.
A study of healthy elderly men and women showed that taking in calories after an overnight fast -- be they from carbohydrates, protein or fat -- boosted the participants' performance on memory tests.
The researchers had 22 elderly men and women perform memory tests after ingesting one of four "meals," given on separate mornings. Each morning, participants had a drink containing either pure carbohydrate, protein, fat or a non-calorie "placebo."
The investigators found that, compared with the placebo drink, carbs, protein and fat all boosted memory performance 15 minutes after ingestion. On tests taken later, the three nutrients had differing effects, with carbohydrates tending to have greater benefits one hour after ingestion -- although fat still tended to improve attention one hour out.
Previous studies have shown the importance breakfast can have in children's school performance.
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition November 2001;74:567-568, 687-693
Well how many of us would benefit from a memory boost? I imagine that might be the majority of the people reading this newsletter.
There are a number of important steps to practically applying this powerful way to overcome the effects of the low blood sugar levels that are present after 8 or more hours of going without food.
The first step is recognizing that eating breakfast is important and something you want to integrate into your life.
Next you need to make a commitment to actually do it.
Then you will need to make a plan to do it. If you fail to make a plan you are planning to fail. Admittedly, this is a major challenge as the food choices typically available in most western cultures do NOT promote health. Breakfast selections are generally the absolute worst in nearly every restaurant I have ever visited.
When you plan your meals you can immediately exclude:
So after understanding that the above foods are not an option, one of the most common questions that patients used to ask me is "If I follow your eating plan, what the heck am I going to eat for breakfast?"
There are really only a handful of good options that I have come up with. My first and highest recommendation would be to prepare and consume fresh vegetable juice. It is important to recognize that you will want to also eat the pulp as many valuable phytonutrients are in the pulp and it would be highly unwise to discard it.
Most people find breakfast the best time to juice, but if for whatever reason you find that morning is not the best time for you to juice than I would juice at either lunch or dinner. I don't believe it is necessary, or even wise, for most people to juice more than once a day.
Why Should I Juice Vegetables Rather Than Eat Them?
Good question. I am glad you asked that as many of my patients ask the same question.
There are three main reasons why you will want to consider incorporating vegetable juicing into your health program.
1. Most of us have relatively compromised intestines as a result of less than optimal food choices over many years. This limits your body's ability to absorb all the nutrients from the vegetables. Juicing will help to "pre-digest" them for you so you will receive most of the nutrition rather than having it go down the toilet bowl. 2. Vegetable juicing allows you to eat more of the vegetables than you would normally otherwise. By incorporating the juice into your eating plan you will easily be able to reach the one pound of raw vegetables per fifty pounds of body weight that you should eat every day. 3. If you eat the vegetables like a salad, you will be having far too many salads during the week. This will violate the rotation principle and increase your likelihood of developing an allergy to some of the vegetables.
1. Most of us have relatively compromised intestines as a result of less than optimal food choices over many years. This limits your body's ability to absorb all the nutrients from the vegetables. Juicing will help to "pre-digest" them for you so you will receive most of the nutrition rather than having it go down the toilet bowl.
2. Vegetable juicing allows you to eat more of the vegetables than you would normally otherwise. By incorporating the juice into your eating plan you will easily be able to reach the one pound of raw vegetables per fifty pounds of body weight that you should eat every day.
3. If you eat the vegetables like a salad, you will be having far too many salads during the week. This will violate the rotation principle and increase your likelihood of developing an allergy to some of the vegetables.