The most important meal of the day is breakfast, as it gives the body a much needed energy boost for the rest of the day. However, there are many of us who do skip breakfast, especially when we are in a hurry and opt for a breakfast of calorie and carbohydrate laden foods, which even the most active person would find difficult to burn off. Listed below are a number of quick and healthy breakfast recipes that will starve off hunger until lunchtime. Try these breakfast recipes and give your body the energy that it needs to get you through the morning.

Banana-Bran Muffins

These muffins are a great breakfast filler and sure to keep you going throughout the morning.

Makes 1 dozen muffins

Ingredients:

2 large eggs
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
2 medium mashed ripe bananas
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup unprocessed wheat bran
1 cup whole-wheat flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/cup chocolate chips (optional)
1/3 cup chopped walnuts (optional) Read the rest of this entry…

Counting calories is creepy and wrong. There. I’ve said it. Well, someone had to. All that fiddly obsessing about the precise calorific value of what you choose to put in your mouth; weird and uptight.

But you’re overweight, and want to do something about it. You know there’s a problem, because you can’t shift the fat. You’ve tried dieting and it just makes you miserable and washed out. You’ve tried working out, but that just leaves you tired and cranky. What is the solution?

Apply a little common sense to the snack issue. You should try to eat five meals a day, to make sure your blood sugar level stays on an even keel and you don’t have hunger pangs. A good pattern would go like this:

1.Breakfast. 2.Mid morning snack. 3.Lunch. 4.Mid afternoon snack. 5.Dinner 6.Supper

I know, that’s six meals a day. Hey, I got hungry. Let’s get into what those snacks might be. Obviously, you had a good breakfast, so you don’t need a lot to eat come mid-morning. (You did have a good breakfast, didn’t you? Best meal of the day.) All you need is something to tide you over until lunch, so you don’t slump into a starving heap before then. You’ve got a ten minute break. What do you eat now?

Do you head for the nearest vending machine and buy chocolate? How about a bag of potato chips? There’s nothing really wrong with either choice – I love chocolate – but you’re trying to lose weight. Shoveling in fat and sugar won’t help you do that. So plan ahead and make your own snacks. You can’t rely on vending machines for healthy choices.

A sandwich is an obvious possibility. Wholemeal bread – any bread, as long as it’s not made from white flour – with some low fat protein and healthy fat and salad. The protein might be chicken breast, or cottage cheese, ham, or tinned fish like tuna or sardines. The salad might be lettuce and tomato, onion, celery; whatever you prefer. The healthy fat could be a thin scrape of butter or a drizzle of olive oil. The important thing is that you get some healthy food into you. The protein kills your hunger pangs. The carbohydrates in the bread keep you fueled up and active. The fat gives your body vital ingredients it needs to maintain good health. Read the rest of this entry…

This traditional thanksgiving meal is very rich in fiber and very easy to make. Hence it has found an apt place in the south as a traditional food at all times. Sweet potato pie recipes are no longer attempted once a year. They have found places on dining tables almost throughout the year, especially at holiday gatherings. It can be made as a quick snack at all times because of its fibrous quality.

The way in which you eat the various sweet potato pie recipes has to do with the taste and the amount of calories that you can add or shed by eating it. You can eat this pie plain or topped with whipped toppings or ice creams. A few cooks would make a meringue using egg whites and applying it on the pie a few minutes before removing it from the bake oven. In whichever way this is eaten, as a dessert after meals or in the case of veggies as a main course, sweet potato pie recipes offer the best health and nutrition for weight watchers. Read the rest of this entry…

Do you find yourself feeling a bit bewildered when you are looking for the best and healthiest choices for kids in terms of their daily diets? A number of parents who are rather worried because their children seem to subsist and supposedly thrive on junk food and fast food do not know that healthy food choices do not come in the “boring” category. The idea that a healthy diet is going to be made up of bland, tasteless food is definitely outdated. Some of the tastiest food recipes are made of a mixture of fresh fruit and vegetables, along with some nuts and seeds, whole grains, and healthy fats.

Eating healthy does not mean that you have to stuff yourself with food that has not been prepared in an imaginative and creative fashion. Why do we instinctively go for junk food? Our society is based around the unhealthy foods because they taste so good… these foods are filled with unnatural ingredients that cause addictions and cravings, such as sugars, sodium, MSG, etc. But, if you are careful about your eating you can avoid these types of ingredients. You should not be surprised to know that a large number of recipes out there can be easily modified and adapted into really healthy and delicious food items, using fresh ingredients like red, green and orange fruits and vegetables – grown organically – whole grain breads, lentils, beans, nuts and seeds, and low-fat oils like olive oil.

Why are the people in the Mediterranean so healthy with such glowing skins? This is because they use plenty of olive oil in their diets. They also make sure that their daily diets are made up of plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables and whole-grain breads. Not only are you going to get a tasty meal, but you are also going to get all the proteins, minerals, carbohydrates and fats required for your body to grow in a really healthy manner. Read the rest of this entry…