Health - Make Time for Breakfast

This week (21st-27th) is Farmhouse Breakfast Week 2007 – part of a campaign (now in its 8th year) to encourage people to get active and healthy. As you’d expect, the message is very much focused on making time for breakfast and also serves to highlight the range and quality of regional breakfast foods available across the country.

A survey carried out by the organisers – the Home-Grown Cereals Authority – asked respondents to list the things that typically got their days off to a bad start. The top response, according to the survey, was ‘lack of sleep’ with more than half the people questioned blaming sleep problems for putting them into a bad mood in the morning.

Second on the list was oversleeping, with the commute to work being the third most likely reason for morning misery. The survey also suggests almost 9 out of 10 of us start the day off in a bad mood.

So what should we be doing to get our days off to a more cheerful and positive start? It seems the weather has a lot to do with it – sunshine and blue skies automatically helping to create a positive mood – but apparently 23% agree that a good breakfast is key to setting yourself up for the working day.

It’s an oft-quoted fact that most nutritionists and dieticians believe breakfast to be the most important meal of the day. After 10-12 hours overnight without food, your energy reserves are low and both your body and brain need fuel. So what you choose to eat at breakfast can affect your mood, physical and mental performance, weight and your general and long term health.

Farmhouse Breakfast Week highlights breakfast as the ideal time to choose wholegrain foods as part of a healthy lifestyle. A bowl of wholegrain cereal with semi-skimmed milk or a couple of slices of wholemeal toast are an ideal way to start the day. Indeed studies show that children who regularly eat a cereal based breakfast are healthier and less likely to be overweight than their colleagues that skip breakfast.

www.businessinberkshire.co.uk/health

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