A nourishing filling breakfast is a sure way to get your health on the right track. Some people don’t feel like eating in the morning. Maybe dinner was larger that digestive system could handle before night's rest, maybe you skipping breakfast is a habit adopted in order to cut some of the calories. Either way, if you don't eat in the morning, you are more likely to overeat later in the day. Most breakfast skippers get extremely exhausted by early afternoon. As a result, most eat faster and more later in the second part of the day sending the blood sugar and energy levels on a roller-coaster ride.

Eating fewer meals during the day also means eating fewer functional foods and vital nutrients. Also, research has also shown that breakfast skippers have slower metabolism and are more predisposed to diabetes and obesity. Try not to destroy your metabolism and have some food in the morning, even something small. Your mind and body will feel more energized and alive.

Best Cereal Choice

 Ideally, every meal should contain a good source of protein, complex carbohydrates and fats. This combination will allow your blood sugar to rise slowly and steadily throughout the morning feeding your cells with the much needed energy. This is the time when your body cries for the highest quality fuel - ereals are terrific for that. But not all are created equal.

For a brain spark, you need carbohydrates, preferably from fibrous whole grains. Simple sugars give you immediate boost, but these get digested, absorbed and used by the body in minutes. Fibre and complex carbohydrates from cereals are digested slowly giving a gradual power supply. Whole grains also have many essential amino and fatty acids. In combination with milk, you get all the needed nutrients.

The best cereal? The least processed one. Thanks to fibre, unprocessed grains usually have less calories per weight than the refined sugary starches. Follow these steps when you buy a box of morning breakfast:

• Read the list of ingredients. The shorter the list - the better. This means the cereal is closest to the original grain and has more natural nutrients.

• Look at how much fibre, sugar, fat or sodium the product has. Try to get one with most fibre and protein, least fat, sugar and salt.

• Compare calories rather than the volume or weight of a serving. For example, an ounce of a nutrient-dense cereal, such as All-Bran with extra fiber, would contain fewer calories per 100g, but more calories per cup than an airy puffed rice. On the other hand, you'll get more nutrients per calorie in the bran cereal.

Fortified Cereals - Are They Better?

Manufacturers promote breakfast cereals as important sources of vitamins and minerals. Indeed, in their most natural state all cereals, especially when mixed with milk, are terrific wellsprings of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytonutrients, essential amino and fatty acids. But processing leaches the natural goodness of whole grains. If stripped micronutrients are not added back to the products, breakfast would be no better than glorified dessert made from simple sugar, fat, salt and bulk. Not a great energy boosting start of the day.

The most commonly added nutrients are Iron, Folate, B-complex vitamins, vitamin C, Calcium and Omega-3 fats. Every vitamin and mineral is essential for optimal health, but only if you eat just enough of these micronutrients. Not less, not more.

The majority of fortified cereals (tested by US Food and Drug Administration) contain 20 percent more iron or 50 percent more folic acid than their labels indicate. Overabundance of vitamins and minerals in the diet is just as bad as undersupply. Both have side effects and unwanted consequences. For example, men and postmenopausal women who consume more than 10mg of Iron increase their risk of heart and liver disease. Consuming too much Folic acid in itself isn't bad, it can mask a B-12 vitamin deficiency, which is linked to gastric cancer.

When choosing a cereal, check the fibre, sugar and salt content. When these are low, the cereal is usually less processed. The quality of the grain is also more important than the percentage of the vitamins listed on the box.

Is Dried Fruit in Cereal Good or Bad?

Dried fruit is a good source of fibre and counts towards the 5-A-DAY target. Most people think that dried fruit is loaded with sugar and calories. When compared to fresh fruit, dried fruit contains proportionally more sugar and calories when you count these by weight. This is because almost 90 percent of fresh fruit is water. When fruit is dried, the water is lost, but all the fibre, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and carbohydrates are preserved. It is easier to get all the natural goodness of fruit in maximum amounts from dried products. Apples, apricots, peaches, raisins, prunes, pears, dates - the variety of functional nature's gifts you can eat in one go is outstanding. It is impossible to get the same amount of nutrients from all the listed fresh fruit in just one breakfast. Additionally, if you have a sweet tooth, the sweetness of dried fruit can replace the sugar which you may be adding to your cereal. I applaud dried fruit as an excellent source of fiber and a unique kind of sugar (fructose). Both of these don't raise levels of hormone insulin responsible for metabolism.

There are a couple of considerations – dried fruit is a high-energy food, so if you are watching your weight, watch the amounts of your servings. It may be easy to turn a light breakfast into a 1000-calorie sugar burst just by eating a cup of granola and a cup of raisins or dates. Another thing to keep in mind, Glance over the ingredients before you buy. Avoid anything with added sugar and fat - dried bananas have the most.

Best Cereal Alternative For Kids

Children love cereal and willingly eat a lot of it. Delicious, bright in color, and entertaining in shapes, breakfast cereals are a great way to get nutrients into kid's growing bodies. However, most kids’ cereals are highly processed, have too much salt, sugar and fat, and hardly resemble the natural state of grain these represent. According to the CHOICE report, “around 70% of the kids’ cereals have too little fibre, too much much sugar and salt to be worth recommending”. But don't get discouraged when you get to the cereal alley in your supermarket.

Select cereal for your kids the same way you would select for yourself – fewer ingredients and least processed. But don't go for extremely high-fibre or high-protein grains. Children's stomachs are smaller, so it may be wiser to fill up the space with nutrient-dense grains. In addition, for fiber to work, you must take extra fluids to help soften the stools, otherwise the extra fiber turns to sludge in the bowels and actually contributes to constipation. So, make sure that kids stay properly hydrated.

Best options are muesli, oatmeal or whole-wheat cereals. Add some dried fruit and honey for satisfy the sweet tooth, a few seeds and nuts, a cup of milk or yogurt – and kids will ask for more.

Miracle Oatmeal

Eating oatmeal may help balance cholesterol levels, reduce the risk of heart disease and certain cancers, lower blood pressure, reduce the risk of childhood asthma, lower your appetite and trim the waist. From all the grains, it might be one of the best ones to eat for breakfast. Cooked, microwaved, baked or soaked overnight – the silky-smooth slightly sweet oatmeal is ideal to heat up your energy in the morning.

Oatmeal is unique several regards. Oats, oat bran, and oatmeal contain a specific type of fiber known as beta-glucan, a type of soluble fiber shown to enhance body's immunity to bacterial infection and normalize blood sugar and insulin in the body. Fiber absorbs water and slows down your digestive process keeping you satisfied for many hours.

Oatmeal contains vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, is a good source of protein, complex carbohydrates , iron and selenium. This grain is rich in lignans, polyunsaturated fatty acids, oligosaccharides, plant sterols and stanols, and saponins and phytoestrogens – an array of chemical compounds beneficial for blood vessel elasticity, bone metabolism, and many other cellular metabolic processes. Antioxidant compounds only in oats, called avenanthramides, help prevent free radicals from damaging LDL cholesterol, thus reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Oats are among the best grains to choose even for gluten-sensitive people. Despite the small amount of gluten they contain, oatmeal is well-tolerated by most suffering from various digestive disorders. The yummy additions you can mix into a hot or cold bowl of oats are limited only by your imagination – everything tastes good in oats.