Easy and fast wheat breakfast available in all shapes and sizes. All that, and it is not boring to make. Having all the good carbs!
Typical breakfast from an idyllic American movie includes cereal with milk. Someone is usually in a rush somewhere, and those cereals seem like the quickest way to satiate the hunger. Our protagonist ravenously devours the cereal, and is on his way.
Little does he know that those cereal are packed with sugar and they are good to trick the body into thinking it is not hungry. Over time however, our body realizes that the energy and quality of food was not sufficient, and as a result, our blood sugar spikes uncontrollably. That is the proof that the energy body wanted to preserve was not found there, since those are all empty calories. Subsequently, we want more to feel full. And the body does that again. And we get fat. Which is not good.
There are plenty of substitutes for cereal, and one of them is shredded wheat, along with oatmeal.
What is a healthy alternative?
Meal that is a good way to start our mornings is called shredded wheat. It is made from whole wheat and wheat bran, which are complex carbs. They come in all shapes and sizes. Which are usually that of a pillow.
Trick here is to eat plain shredded wheat. Eating something like frosted wheat makes the whole health point kind of lackluster, since the sugar in those is pretty high. And remember what we talked about the sugar in the beginning.
You will just start a vicious cycle of hunger if you start eating empty calories. There can never be enough of them since you are never getting full.
What are healthy carbs?
You can eat this meal with oat bread if you are looking to store energy for some aerobic exercise. It is also good if you want to gain weight in a healthy way. Any weight is weight, but you don’t want to carry around a ‘’bad’’ weight in the form of adipose tissue. Basically, you can’t do anything with excess body fat. It just hinders you in every way. Safe to say that it is not practical, especially if it is not gained through healthy foods. Having a protective layer of fat in strenuous strength exercises or strength sports makes sense. Having that as a normal person with none to average physical exertion is something that we definitely don’t want.
Here, the carbs come into play. Finding what carbs suit you is a sure way to keep yourself healthy for a long time. They are an indispensable source of energy, and any sane program should include them. You don’t even have to be a marathon runner or a triathlete to recognize that you wouldn’t go far only eating meat. Protein that you get from meat builds your muscles and repairs them. It doesn’t make you up and running. Carbs do that. Energy that we store in the anaerobic, aerobic and every other muscular system uses more carbs than protein, because protein is not that abundant as carbs. Think of your average meal. You would always get more bread or potatoes than meat. Gravy and side dishes were always the carbs. Not the meat.
Complex carbs:
Carbs consist of three components, which are
- Fiber
- Starch
- Sugar
Fiber and starch are complex carbs, while sugar is not. We can determine the quality of food by looking at the percentage each of these has in a type of food we are looking at. SImple carbs are sugars, and they don’t contribute anything to any diet. Only good use of them is if you have a sweet tooth, and you stumbled to a healthy website by mistake.
Complex carbs are much richer in nutrients, and they have a lot more than just sugar in them. They are high in fiber, which helps with the digestion and cholesterol.
Complex carbs can be found in:
- Fruit
- Vegetables
- Nuts
- Whole grains
- Beans
High starch foods are rice, peas, whole wheat bread, corn.
Try to understand now what it means to eat complex versus simple carbs. Just try to eat sugar. Like in a sugar cube. That is what you are doing to yourself through eating simple carbs. Naturally occuring sugars, such as those in fruit variants are perfectly fine. Added sugars are the problem, since they can be the cause for the myriad of health issues.
Recommended dose of sugar for men is 9 teaspoons, which is about 37 grams. For women, that number is 25 grams or 6 teaspoons.
Recipe:
Meal that we are talking about today is shredded wheat cereal. If you have been following through the text, you will start to get worried. But don’t be. Cereal is just the form of this delicious meal.
Let’s get started. You can go really easy with this and just take the desired amount of wheat and pour some milk and you are good to go.
For those that want to take their culinary journey to the skies and beyond, you can add skimmed milk instead of regular milk. Just kidding, that was a simple change. Kidding for just the milk, of course. There are plenty of ways you can make this. Skimmed milk is beneficial here since it has fewer calories and less saturated fat than regular milk, and has a higher amount of vitamins, protein and calcium.
Another way is to add the wheat into a bowl, and mix in raisins, strawberries, raspberries. Grind nuts of your preferred choice (could be almonds, cashews or even pistachios if you are daring with your taste buds). And you are good to go, with regular or skimmed milk.
A wheat meal that is good on the go can also be arranged. It takes 5 minutes to prepare, and it needs to be cooked for 5 minutes. You need
- ½ cup of brown sugar
- ½ honey
- ½ peanut butter (measure with caution)
- ¾ cup raisins
Put all of these in a bowl compatible with the microwave. If you want to add the butter, melt it into intervals for the creamier texture, and so it can be integrated as a cookie form. When it is melted, add it into the bowl where the rest of the ingredients are. Put all of that into a pan, and press it over the pan. Pan can be of a regular size, like the one for eggs. When all that is cooled, cut it into bars.