Friday, June 13, 2008

Breakfast is the New Dinner





-Lauren Silverman

Breakfast is the New main course. Ever since health researches began stressing the importance of eating a morning meal, and corporations such as McDonald's found out that getting people to buy breakfast food items would boost revenues, there’s been a major push to get kids to stuff their face while they’re still in their pajamas.

Humans have been eating breakfast since…well…for a long time. Yet only this year has breakfast really made it on the menu (pun intended). Subway, McDonald's, Wendy’s, Burger King, and Starbucks now feature special “breakfast menus”. Most recently, Jamba Juice entered the breakfast war with new breakfast smoothies. I just tried the “chunky strawberry smoothie” and had trouble chugging down the strawberries, bananas, yogurt soymilk and peanut butter mix topped with fresh bananas and organic pumpkin flax seed granola at seven in the morning. It was everything I might normally want to sit down and eat for breakfast, put in a blender (literally).

Adding breakfast to your daily routine is supposedly a good thing. Scientific research shows many health benefits to regularly eating breakfast. So, when on April 9th the Burger King Corp. announced the introduction of the new Cheesy Bacon BK WRAPPER[TM], and the senior vice president of global product marketing said "Our guests will never skip breakfast again..."
We should have been relieved. Right?

I’m not so sure. And neither is the Board of Health in New York. They came up with a plan to help people think before they bite into a 1,280-calorie McDonald's deluxe breakfast.

And those morning breakfast bars that have become so popular? When I was little I definitely didn’t sit down to morning cartoons with a “Coco-Pops bar” or an “Oats Sugar Raisins Coconut Granola bar”. I mean, what ever happened to normal, un-compacted meals. I’m talking about some cereal, some milk, and some fruit – not cereal milk fruit bars that are the size and density of a brick.

Us young folk are getting a pretty confusing message. “EAT BREAKFAST – DON’T EAT BREAKFAST”. Skipping breakfast leads to poor health, yet embracing egg mc muffins and chocolate peanut butter toffee bars daily can’t be good either. I agree with the BBC news that “Cereal bars are no substitute for cornflakes,” and for that matter, “hamlettes”are no substitute for fresh scrambled eggs.

What's on your breakfast menu?

* Images taken from: usaweekend.com infoinsanity.com & biggestmenu.com

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