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.
