Eat Better
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Breakfast is best
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Having gone without fuel overnight, you need to fill the empty tank. If you don’t, your body goes into emergency mode, breaking down muscle to burn. Then, because you’re hungry, you eat more than you need later in the day, perhaps grabbing less healthy snacks because they’re quick and easy.
What happens if I skip breakfast?
A 16-year study, involving almost 27,000 men, found those who skipped breakfast were more likely to have a fatal heart attack than those who didn’t.
Why? Because skipping breakfast increased their risk of obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.
What are the best cereals to eat?
Go for unsweetened wholegrain cereals such as unsugared muesli, shredded wheat, weetabix or oatmeal porridge. (Granola too is full of good stuff but high in calories.)
Serve with semi-skimmed milk, unsweetened yoghurt/fromage frais or dairy-free alternative such as soy, almond, rice or oat milks. Look for milk alternatives that are calcium-enriched. Add fresh berries, nuts or chopped fruit for extra flavour.
Does a smoothie count as a portion of fruit?
If you include a good amount of whole fresh or frozen fruit and vegetables, a home-made smoothie can count as up to two of your 5-a-day.
Use a variety of different fruits and vegetables (carrot and beetroot are especially good) and add a few leaves of spinach or kale, too. You won’t taste the extra leaves but they add extra vitamins, fibre and colour.
Shop-bought smoothies may have hidden extras like flavourings and much less fruit. Check labels. They should tell you whether they count as a portion. (Go easy: smoothie and fruit juice sugars may be natural but they are still free sugars.)
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| This content is wholly based on the Men's Health Forum's man manual Eat. Drink. Don't Diet. which was prepared in line with the NHS England Information Standard of which the MHF is a member. Follow the links for more information or to buy copies. |
Date published
18/06/15
Date of last review
28/02/15
Date of next review
28/02/18
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The Men’s Health Forum need your support It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking. In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to. It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for. We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing. Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.
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