Warm-ups for
the morning session start at 7:00 am, your two children need a
breakfast, you're in a strange town, and the only place you can
find for breakfast is one of the fast food places. What to do?
The most
important thing to do is avoid fats for two reasons: 1) Fats have an immediate and
dramatic effect on the ability of the circulatory system to carry
nutrients, especially oxygen, to muscle cells. For young people about to
participate in a swimming meet this is a definite handicap. And 2) As part of developing lifetime
habits for long term health, people of all ages should keep their
daily fat intake to less than 30 percent of the total calories
consumed.
The Mayo Clinic
Nutrition Letter offers these tips:*
You don't
always have to nix nutrition for speed and convenience. Fast foods may not make ideal
meals, but some do offer healthful carbohydrate and only moderate
amounts of fat. You
also can downplay fat excesses by sorting out subtle differences
among items. Consider
these points the next time you're grabbing breakfast on the
run:
Keep it simple -- The fewer ingredients you order in breakfast
sandwiches, the lower the fat, sodium and calories. Hold the sausage and
bacon.
Order it "drier that a biscuit" -- The English muffin is the
lowest-fat breakfast food on most quick-service menus. Order it dry and substitute jelly
for the butter; this virtually eliminates fat. When other
ingredients are equal, a sandwich made on an English muffin is
lower in fat than one on a biscuit. Croissant sandwiches are highest
in fat. "Croissant"
may sound light and airy, but it contains twice the fat of a
biscuit and six times the fat of an English
muffin.
Choose "cakes"
instead of eggs --Pancakes, even with a little butter, offer more
energizing carbohydrate and less fat and cholesterol than egg
dishes.
Below are three
of the lowest-fat breakfast options found by the Mayo Clinic
Nutrition Letter:
These meals supply 20 to 30 percent of daily protein for the
average adult, about 25 percent of daily calories for the average
women, complex carbohydrates, vitamin C, and, in one example,
calcium.
1. McDonald's Hotcakes with butter
and syrup, orange juice,coffee: 493 calories,16% of calories from
fat.
2. McDonald's English muffin with
butter, orange juice, low-fat milk: 384 calories, 23 % of calories
from fat.
3. Jack in the Box Breakfast Jack
(egg, ham and cheese on a hamburger bun), orange juice,
coffee: 387 calories,
30 percent of calories from fat.
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*Reprinted from
Mayo Clinic Nutrition Letter with permission of Mayo Foundation for
Medical Education and Research, Rochester, Minnesota,
55905.
