Winter Breakfast: How to start each cold, short day with exactly what your body needs

Our bodies need different foods depending on the season and climate in which we live. Here is a little guide to some delicious, nourishing breakfasts good for a cold winter, including recipes. Yet, remember that every person’s body is different. Your own body’s reaction to the foods you eat can tell you more about what’s good for you than any food trend.

For example, after you eat:

• Do you feel tired?
• Do you feel bloated, nauseous or have heart burn?
• Do you feel clear-headed and energetic?
• Do you still feel hungry after certain foods?

Take these recommendations and experiment to see what works for you in these cold winter months. Use it as an excuse to explore your internal landscape. Winter is the season of introspection, hybernation and self reflection.

We have all heard it said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Yet so many patients come to me with the admission that they often skip breakfast all together. Many of us do not feel hungry in the morning, we are in a hurry or we begin with coffee or other caffeinated beverages that kill the appetite.

As a result blood sugar drops and the body is forced to use its stored energy instead of producing more energy for the day. If your stores of energy aren’t good to begin with, that’s when you hit the morning or midday slump. You end up feeling sluggish and ready for a nap instead of ready to take on the day.

Drinking coffee on an empty stomach actually raises stomach acid production at the wrong time, which can cause a decrease in stomach acid at the right time, when you need it to digest food. This means even if you are eating enough nutrients, you might not be absorbing them. It also causes food to pass through the system quickly, affecting proper absorption.

While winter is a time for slowing down, it’s still full of responsibilities. So I’ll share with you some ways to keep in tune with winter while staying clear-headed and awake for the short days we have.

Following the Seasons: Eating (and living) in Harmony with the Winter Season

From a Chinese medical perspective, the hours of 7-11am are when the Spleen and Stomach are the strongest and digestion is optimal. So, yes, eating between those hours is very important. It gives us the energy for the day. It sharpens the mind. But not all breakfast is full of the nutrients to fuel a full day and most of the typical “healthy” American food trends tend to err on the side of a sweet/cold/raw breakfast.

This may be the main problem with the American diet overall. Sugary beverages and carbohydrate snacks take the place of nutrient-rich meals, so Americans find themselves overweight and undernourished, full of “empty calories” which means carbohydrates and sugars that provide a quick burst of energy without actually giving the body many nutrients. The body converts sugar and carbohydrates to fat and calories because it is getting too many of those and not getting the proteins, vitamins, minerals and healthy fats it needs. For more on the roll fat and sugar play in the body, see my article Fat Vs. Sugar: How fat has taken the rap for sugar’s mischief.

As an acupuncturist rooted in the traditions of Chinese medicine, I look at the stomach as a cooking pot that is trying to get food into a digestible consistency before its nutrients can be absorbed. The harder the stomach has to work to warm and “cook” food, the more of those nutrients it has to expend and the less get stored to fuel your day.

The Stomach and Spleen are considered the primary producers of qi and blood. The qi of the body is somewhat equivalent to energy and the blood is the body’s circulating nutritive substance, so feeding the Spleen and Stomach what they like and when they like it assures that you will have strong qi and blood, necessary for function and health in everyday life.

Sweet/cold/raw foods take work on the part of the stomach to break down so nutrients can be absorbed. And that’s if they even contain nutrients! Some studies say that raw foods contain more nutrients than cooked foods. This may be accurate, however those studies are seldom able to measure just exactly how much of those nutrients are absorbed by the body. Other sources say even though cooked food contains less nutrients, what is there is more absorbable, so the benefits to the body are greater. Vitamins, minerals and proteins do you no good if they just pass through you!

All of that said, there is no food trend or idea that is healthy, across the board, for all people. Therefore the ultimate, healthy breakfast will vary person to person. And it will vary season to season. On a nice, hot day in spring or summer, a bowl of fruit and yogurt or a smoothie might be perfect for a hungry morning tummy. But in January? When it’s 20 degrees outside? The same rules do not apply! It is natural for our bodies to emulate the rhythms of the natural world. This means we slow down in the winter. The cozy couch with a book is more appealing than the nightlife. A bowl of soup sounds better than a salad. You may put on a few extra pounds in the winter. Sleep more and exercise less. To an extent, that is a healthy, natural pattern. This is our yin season. It is the time to store up resources, rest, heal and rebuild so when spring unfurls its tendrils we are energized and ready for each warm breeze. Our bodies’ needs are different in the winter and so should our diets be.

The Winter Breakfast

I recommend warm, cooked breakfasts in the wintertime. This may feel hard to achieve for the busy person who rushes through the morning to get to work on time. As important as sitting down and taking time to chew, taste and swallow food is, it’s not always possible.

The crock-pot is one helpful tool, a brilliant breakfast cook, preparing anything from oatmeal to congee to stew to yams while you are still dreaming. Indeed, wash a few small to medioum sized yams and throw them in the crock-pot before bed. Set it on low and in the morning you have soft, delicious yams. You don’t have to add water or anything! Just poke a few holes in the skin with a fork so they don’t explode. Add butter or cook an egg or sausage to go with it.

Here are some guidelines and recipes to help make planning and executing a healthy breakfast easier. Of course I believe the ultimate determining factor to what your body considers a healthy breakfast is how you feel after you eat it.

A breakfast that makes you want to go back to sleep is probably not giving your body what it needs for the day.

If you are hungry again an hour after you eat, you may be needing more protein and carbohydrates.

If caffeine wakes you up for about 2-3 hours and then you need more, perhaps waiting an hour or two before you drink it (or not drinking it at all) will inspire your body to take control of its own energy-building. A real, natural energy that doesn’t push you beyond your capacity.

If You’re an Oatmeal Person….

For some, oatmeal is the perfect breakfast food. It is full of protein, fiber and carbohydrates so it can give both immediate and long-lasting energy. And we are talking whole oats, not instant oats here.

For someone with an active job, the carbs in oatmeal might be necessary fuel. Someone with a desk job might feel comatose after a bowl of oatmeal. Let your body decide.

If oatmeal is your chosen morning meal, consider adding nuts, seeds and a little dried fruit for a sweetener. Or mix in some nut butter or yogurt once it’s cooked.

Oat and buckwheat groats are a good protein-rich alternative to quick oats. If your mornings are busy, throw all your ingredients with plenty of water into a crock-pot at night, set it for low and wake up to delicious hot breakfast.

Cinnamon and ginger are excellent winter spices to keep your immune system strong and your blood circulating in the winter months.

Winter Breakfast Recipes:

Congee

In China, congee is a common breakfast food. Congee is a rice porridge that can be sweet or savory depending on what is added. Congee is a staple food in Chinese medicine and can be cooked with Chinese herbs and proteins and eaten by the infirm and the healthy alike.

1. Combine 1 part rice (or other grain) with 7 parts water in a pot on the stove or in the crock-pot. I advise soaking the rice for 1-4 hours before cooking for maximum digestibility. Rinse the rice and add to the pot.
2. Either simmer on low, checking frequently, or set the crock-pot to low and leave all day or overnight. You will know the congee is done when the individual grains of rice melt into a porridge. On the stove congee cooks in 4-7 hours.

Savory Chicken Congee
Add to rice and water:

• Slices of chicken, cooked or raw
• Chopped carrot
• Black pepper
• Fennel

Sweet Breakfast Congee
Add to rice and water:

• 1 cinnamon stick
• 3 slices of fresh ginger root
• A handful of Chinese dates or slices of medjool date
• Small slices of apple

Protein + Vegetables= The Perfect Breakfast (for many!)

Starting the day off with sausages and kale or spinach and an egg, baked tofu slices and collard greens or leftover chicken and Chinese broccoli gives you protein, vitamins and minerals needed for a healthy day. With minimal carbohydrates and sugar, there should be no “crash” after this meal.

Apples and Sausage

A comfort food favorite of mine, we ate this delicious winter meal for dinner when I was growing up, but it makes a perfect breakfast food as well! You can use whatever type of sausage you prefer: chicken, pork or lamb.

1. Slice sausages into bite-sized pieces. Slice apple.
2. Preheat oven to 375.
3. Mix the apples and sausage together in a baking dish with a lid or lay tinfoil across the top. Bake for 25 minutes or until the apples are very tender.
4. Uncover the dish and let cook another 5-10 minutes until they sausage is golden brown.

The apples melt into a sweet and delicious sauce for the sausages and I find the two foods together are so delicious and complementary they need nothing more.

Squash Pancakes

Squash pancakes have become one of my favorite breakfasts. Fast and simple, full of goodness, you can dress them up any way you like.

Mix well into a bowl:

• 1-2 coarsely grated summer squash (depending on size).
• 1 large or 2 small egg(s)
• A healthy scoop of nut butter (I prefer almond butter)
• Salt and pepper to taste

The ingredients should form a consistent “batter” after mixing. Then:

1. Heat a skillet on medium on the stovetop. Add 1-2 Tablespoons of coconut or avocado oil
2. Once the oil is hot, scoop the batter onto the skillet and form pancakes about 3-4 inches in diameter. Let the pancakes cook until the edges look crispy before flipping. The pancakes should be a golden brown, light and fluffy. They may be a little crumbly.

These delicious and simple snacks can be eaten at any time of day. You can wrap one up to take with you on the go or sit down to a whole stack.

I enjoy adding walnuts and kimchi to my batter before I cook it, but you can play around with the recipe, adding anything you like. Onions, grated carrot, garlic, apple slices.

Mung Bean Pancakes

If you haven’t noticed, I recommend simple, fresh, delicious food. Cooking doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive (of course it certainly can be!) and for those intimidated by the idea of straying from packaged foods, I have tried to include recipes that are forgiving for the new cook.

1. Soak 1 cup of mung beans in 3 cups of water overnight. You might wake to find the mung beans have absorbed all the water! This is good. It makes the beans more digestible and softens them for the next step.
2. Rinse the mung beans well. Put them in a blender with a pinch of salt. Add just a quarter cup of water to start. Turn on the blender and observe the consistency. You want the batter to be thick but pourable, like regular pancake batter. Keep slowly adding water until it has reach the proper consistency and then blend on high until the batter is smooth and even.
3. Heat a skillet on medium and add 1 Tablespoon of coconut or avocado oil (I recommend these oils because they are full of good fat and can cook at a high temperature without burning). Once the oil is heated, pour the batter into pancakes 3 inches in diameter. Let the pancakes cook until the edges are crisp and lifting off the skillet. Flip the pancakes and cook until golden.

These light and chewy pancakes have a distinctly bean-y flavor and are delicious with butter and real maple syrup, yogurt and jam or savory with curry or sated vegetables.

Worldly Wisdom on Breakfast

Gallo Pinto is a common breakfast in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, combining rice and beans with a colorful array of vegetables.

In Egypt Ful Medames is made for breakfast by slow cooking fava beans and drizzling them with olive oil, lemon and garlic.

In Uganda it’s green bananas in beef stew.

In the Cundinamarca region of Colombia they eat changua, a milk soup with cheese and scallions.

In Burma, there’s rice vermicelli in fish broth and in Pakistan, spicy potato and chickpea curry.

This gives you an idea of a variety of breakfasts eaten worldwide that are well-cooked and protein rich. And some of these hot, spicy breakfasts are eaten even in hot climates! So perhaps we need to change the way we think about breakfast. How do we want to wake our bodies up? What do we use to fuel our day? And in the winter, how to we honor the season instead of resisting it?

Sugar vs. Fat - How Fat has Taken the Rap for Sugar's Mischeif

There is a strong debate going about the health risks of consuming sugar versus fat. It’s difficult to know what or who to believe. And the information presented to us keeps changing.

Is sugar causing obesity and diabetes? Is fat responsible for heart disease? Are they both evil, or are they being falsely villianized?

Of course, like most health-related issues, the answers aren’t simple. Some fats are good for us andsmall amounts of glucose are necessary. In a culture of extremes, we must look for moderation in this heated debate.

“The diet industry is polarized around simple debates such as fat vs sugar because there are huge amounts of money at stake. Farmers, food manufacturers, lobbyists, scientists and authors of diet books need to defend one or other side.”

- Dr. Alexander Van Tulleken, MD, The Sugar Blues

It’s easy to villianize sugar. And there are good reasons to.

Yet, sugars found in fruits, vegetables and grass-fed dairy products are balanced with dietary fibers and essential nutrients. The consumption of these sugars is not bad, it’s the amount of sugar consumed in the average American diet that is the problem.

Consider this: it is believed that in 1822 the average American consumed 45g of sugar every 5 days and in 2012 the average American consumed 765g of sugar every 5 days. That’s about 130 pounds of sugar a year. And most people don’t know half the time that they are even eating sugar because it is hidden away in supposedly savory, store-bought foods. Until the government acknowledges the link between the spike in American sugar consumption and serious illness and puts restrictions on the “sugar-marketing” that has become so prevalent, it is up to us to regulate our own sugar intake.

“Humans weren't designed to eat this much sugar. We used to get sugar once a year when fruit fell from the trees. Even honey was protected by the bees… Now, we eat 140 pounds, roughly, a year, on average. Our bodies simply didn’t evolve to be able to handle that.

So it hits the liver, the liver says I don't know what to do with all this sugar, so it starts to metabolize it in unusual ways and it gets turned into what are known as low-density lipoprotein particles. And that's the worst kind of cholesterol.”

–Sanjay Gupta, Chief medical correspondent CNN

The food industry is not doing us any favors when they add sugar to most packaged and prepared foods: spaghetti sauce, salad dressing, crackers and chips. Even the organic ones. When we eat these foods we don’t think we are getting huge doses of sugar, but we are. Likewise, carbohydrates convert to sugar in the body and many carbohydrate foods like white bread also contain no nutrients. Your body feels full, but actually it is starving because those empty calories do not provide the body with the nutrient resources it needs.

“If you want to lose weight it will be much easier if you avoid processed foods made with sugar and fat. These foods affect your brain in a completely different way from natural foods and it's hard for anyone to resist eating too much.”

-Dr. Alexander Van Tulleken, MD

Fruits and other natural sources of sugar also include nutrients and dietary fibers needed for a healthy system. Added sugars and industrial seed oils (canola, safflower, sunflower, see below for a more complete list) add calories without providing any nutrients, hence the term “empty calories.” These foods make your body feel full, but really it is not getting the nutrients it needs. Enough of an imbalanced diet and the body thinks it’s starving, even as weight is gained.

On a list of ingredients, sugar may be listed under the following names: sucrose (table sugar), corn sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup (made in labs to be even sweeter than possible in nature), fruit-juice concentrates, nectars, raw sugar, malt syrup, maple syrup, fructose sweeteners, liquid fructose, honey, molasses, anhydrous dextrose, or other words ending in “-ose,” the chemical suffix for sugars. Sadly, even natural and organic foods touted as being healthy contain evaporated cane juice. Which is just sugar with a fancy name.

All said, there’s good reason to seriously reduce the amount of sugar you consume, even natural sugars.

Reasons to Avoid Sugar

1) Sugar consumption has a strong negative impact on the immune system. At a blood sugar level of 120 and above, the body's ability to destroy viruses and bacteria is reduced by up to 75%. As little as 20 grams of sugar has the capacity to compromise immune function for the 4-6 hours following ingestion. Recent studies have shown that long-term daily ingestion of sugar raises the risk of developing cancer by as much as 60%.

2) Sugar consumption depletes minerals from the body tissues, skeleton, and teeth. Mineral depletion occurs from sugar consumption in several ways. Most obviously, sugar represents "empty" calories in the diet thereby reducing daily nutrient intake. In addition, sugar upsets absorption of nutrients that we do eat by compromising the integrity of our digestive tract. Finally, a high sugar diet promotes inflammation and oxidative stress that out body has to counteract by pulling neutralizing minerals out of our bony stores and teeth.

3) Sugar consumption leads to weight gain and cardiovascular disease. Unless the fructose from sugar consumption is immediately used as fuel, the liver stores it as fat. Fat is transported away from the liver into peripheral fat stores by LDL and VLDL (types of cholesterol), raising the risk for cardiovascular disease. Oxidative stress from high blood-glucose compounds this problem by creating inflammation along the walls of the arteries.

4) Sugar is addictive. Sugar consumption stimulates the "reward" centers of the brain by initiating a surge of dopamine release. This effect is also seen with the ingestion of cocaine, opiates, alcohol, amphetamine, and nicotine. In addition, sugar promotes the release of endorphins, which create a sense of euphoria and increase the likelihood of addiction.

5) Sugar causes depression. Because the brain relies on a stable supply of glucose for normal functioning, rapidly rising and falling blood glucose significantly undermine its functioning. Depression, anxiety, aggression, and fatigue are all side effects of sugar consumption because the brain struggles to adapt to the highs and lows in blood sugar provoked by rapid absorption of glucose from the gut.

6) Sugar consumption leads to insulin resistance and can pave the way for gestational or type 2 diabetes. The accumulation of fat in the liver following excess sugar consumption is a trigger for the body to begin "ignoring" insulin, the hormone that drives sugar into our cells. As insulin resistance worsens over time, type 2 diabetes develops. Complications of diabetes are systemic and can include cardiovascular disease, kidney damage, poor wound healing, and neuropathy.

7) Sugar strongly interferes with digestive health by favoring the growth of intestinal yeast and slowing the passage of food through the intestine. Overgrowth of yeast leads to permeability of the gut wall and undigested proteins can "leak" into the blood stream. The immune system reacts to foreign protein in the blood, leading to food allergies and setting the stage for auto-immune diseases.

8) Sugar consumption by children is associated with learning disabilities, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, allergies, obesity, tooth decay and eczema.

9) Sugar consumption during pregnancy can lead to gestational diabetes, toxemia, and premature labor. Children born to mothers who consumed high sugar diets during pregnancy are more likely to be obese and struggle with insulin resistance and diabetes during their life.

Because of its strongly addictive quality, sugar represents an increasingly prevalent portion of the American diet. Although sugar consumption has become mainstream, it is important to remember that sugar is a highly processed plant derivative that is challenging for the body to process on a daily basis.

Sugar consumption taxes every system in the body including the digestive system, immune system, cardiovascular system, and skeletal system. Diets that are high in sugar have been associated with high rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, autoimmune disease, allergies, attention deficit disorder, depression, and cancer.

For more info on sugar and what it does in the body: http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/06/17/everything-you-need-to-know-about-sugar/

The Good and the Bad

“Next to sugar, there is not a worse food to put in your mouth than vegetable oils. They look suspiciously similar to sugar because these oils are highly processed and highly refined. They are very unstable (think: create free-radicals), they turn into trans-fats, and when you consume these oils, they increase inflammation in your body.”

–Dr. Scott Olson, ND.

The difference between healthy fats and unhealthy fats is extreme. Fat is essential to the body for several reasons. It stores energy. It insulates us. But most importantly, our cell membranes are made of phospholipids, glycolipids, and cholesterol.

The cell membrane is what protects the cell from its surroundings and decides what enters the cell and what doesn’t via selective permeability. Phospholipids are the largest component in the cell wall and they are essentially made up of saturated and unsaturated fats. Lipids allow for nutrient exchange. Cell health affects everything: brain function, heart health, joint mobility, to name a few. Simply put: eating good fat ensures that the cell membrane has integrity and is protected.

Furthermore the good fats in our diet are not the ones that make us overweight. Eating bad fat compromises all the cells of the body. Bad fat is what affects cholesterol levels, creates fat storage and clogs up the liver. And by “bad fat” I don’t mean saturated fat. I mean processed, human-made fat. Fat that offers the body nothing and replaces important building blocks with poor, unstable substitutes.

“’Bad’ fats, such as trans fats, are guilty of the unhealthy things all fats have been blamed for—weight gain, clogged arteries, and so forth. But good fats such as omega-3s have the opposite effect. In fact, healthy fats play a huge role in helping you manage your moods, stay on top of your mental game, fight fatigue, and even control your weight.”

- Lawrence Robinson and Jeanne Segal Ph.D.

Good Fats

Monounsaturated Fats

• Avocados and Avocado Oil
• Olives and Olive Oil
• Nuts (almonds, peanuts, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, pecans, cashews)
• Natural nut butter (containing just nuts and salt)

Polyunsaturated Fats

• Walnuts
• Sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin seeds
• Flaxseed and Flax Seed oil (keep refrigerated)
• Fatty fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel, herring, trout, sardines)
• Non-GMO soymilk and tofu

Omega-3 Fatty Acids

• Salmon (especially wild-caught king and sockeye)
• Herring
• Mackerel
• Anchovies
• Oysters
• Sardines
• Pole and line-caught tuna
• Lake trout
• Algae such as seaweed (high in EPA and DHA)
• Fish oil or algae supplements
• Walnuts
• Flaxseed
• Brussels Sprouts
• Kale
• Spinach
• Parsley

Other Good Sources of Fat

• Grass-fed beef, bison and pork
• Grass-fed dairy (for those who tolerate dairy)
• Free-range chicken
• Free-range chicken eggs

The Importance of Grass-fed Meat

Grass-fed beef has up to five times more Omega-3 fatty acids than grain-fed beef. It has two to five times as much CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid)- oddly enough one of the number one weight loss supplements in the world and associated with lowering cancer risk. When they do studies that say red meat can cause cancer and is unhealthy for the heart, they are talking about corn-fed, factory-farmed red meat, not grass fed red meat. It’s a whole different animal.

Grass fed animals live under humane conditions and have less of an impact on the environment, unlike factory farming, known to be as bad for the environment as driving. The close-quarters of factory-farmed cows require the use of antibiotics to prevent the spread of disease. Those antibiotics are then transferred to our bodies when we eat the meat, affecting the delicate balance of our gut microbia. Growth hormone is used in factory farming to increase the size of the animals before they are slaughtered. This also transfers to the human body upon consumption.

It’s no wonder red meat has gotten a bad reputation! If studies are done using meat from animals that live in their own feces, are pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, often never see the sunlight, can’t move they are packed in so tight and die in terror, it is no surprise to me that the results reflect negatively on the consumption of red meat.

And sadly, the only reason corn-fed, factory farmed meat is cheaper is that the government subsidizes corn, saving feedlot farmers billions a year and doing nothing for the environmentally aware, humane grass-fed meat farms.

For more on this issue: http://foodrevolution.org/blog/the-truth-about-grassfed-beef/

Bad Fats

Artificial trans fats are really what you are looking to avoid. Anything with a shelf life. As in: most packaged foods. Human-made vegetable oils are fats that have been deformed during a process called “hydrogenation.” Vegetable oil is combined with hydrogen gas to create oil that will not spoil if it sits around on a grocery store shelf for 8 months. These partially hydrogenated oils (you may have heard that term before!) increases your risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes by raising the bad cholesterol, LDL, lowering the good cholesterol, HDL and creating inflammation in the body.

These fats can be found in:

• Packaged snack foods
• Margarine and processed vegetable oils: Safflower, Sunflower, Canola, Palm Kernel, Corn, Soybean, Cottonseed, Peanut, Grapeseed
• Commercially produced cookies, crackers, cakes, muffins, pie crusts, pizza dough, and breads
• All “partially hydrogenated” oils

For more on how to eliminate bad fats and incorporate good fats into your diet, see this informative article: http://www.helpguide.org/articles/healthy-eating/choosing-healthy-fats.htm

 

After Note:

Allow me a small tirade. Health should not be a trend. Access to healthy food should not be a luxury or a privilege. But it is. Most food as it originates in nature is healthy. It is through genetic modification, forced crop growth and harvest and processing that food becomes unhealthy.

What we are offered in boxes, bags and cans at the store has traveled so far and gone through so many steps to get to us. More often than not each of those steps detracts from its benefits to our body.

The simpler, the fresher and the less processed food is, the better it is for the body. Plants and humans evolved together, after all.

It is a major problem that the food industries responsible for a majority of our health problems are subsidized and supported by our government. It is a problem that small, organic farms struggle, and that simple food costs more money than processed food. Because our health affects every other thing in our lives, because the health of the American people is a current crisis, I cannot help but think we need a food revolution.

Healthy food should be a basic human right.