Importance of breakfast

Ask any teacher the difference a good breakfast can make to kids at school and they’ll tell you it improves behaviour and concentration, reduces tiredness and generally makes them more receptive and less disruptive.

For these and all sorts of other reasons, nutritionists consider breakfast the most important meal of the day. Yet many schoolchildren are still going without it for one reason or another. Bad idea!

Breakfast, as the word suggests, literally means ‘breaking the fast’.

After going 10–12 hours overnight without food, children’s energy reserves are low and their bodies, and perhaps more importantly their brains, need fuel.

What’s more, studies show that people who eat breakfast are less likely to be overweight, have a higher intake of key vitamins and minerals and are less likely to suffer from colds than those who skip their first meal of the day.

Ideally you should be looking to get around 25% of daily calories into them at the breakfast table. Like any other meal, a balanced breakfast should include foods from each of the food groups.

It’s also a good time to get them to eat at least 2 servings of fruit. For instance, 1 small glass of fruit juice, 1 tbsp of raisins, 7 strawberries or 1 sliced banana sprinkled over their cereal. If you can tick off 2 servings at breakfast, getting them to their ‘5 a Day’ should be a doddle.

Did you know?

A healthy low fat breakfast - something like a glass of fruit juice followed by a bowl of Kellogg’s Bran Flakes with semi-skimmed milk and a banana - will provide:

• 100% of Recommended Daily Amount (RDA) of vitamin C.
• 70% of RDA of folic acid.
• 53% of RDA of iron.