Best Breakfasts

Start your day off right with these tasty breakfast ideas

Want to know the secret to a good breakfast? Mix it up! When building your breakfast make sure you get a nourishing balance of carbohydrates, protein, fat and fibre.

Whole-grain cereals and toasts are great sources of complex carbohydrates and fibre, while fresh fruit and vegetables provide extra vitamins and antioxidants. Get healthy protein from low-fat cottage cheese, yoghurt, milk and eggs. Include just a little fat by adding nuts and seeds to your cereal or spreading nut spreads (such as peanut butter) on whole-grain toast, or adding flaxseed oil or LSA (ground linseed, sunflower and almond mix) to porridge, muesli or yoghurt. And voila! You have a perfectly balanced breakfast.

Check out these healthy breakfast ideas to get you inspired.

Read more :

• The Calorie King’s secret breakfast recipe
• Cereals and porridge
• Eggs egg-cetera
• Quick and easy
• Fruity combos
• Something different

The Calorie King’s secret breakfast recipe

The Calorie King's secret breakfast!

Cereal is an ever-popular breakfast food, but not all cereals are created equal. Some are so high in sugar they make chocolate cake look like healthy! Allan Borushek, dietitian and author of the best-selling Pocket Calorie, Fat and Carbohydrate Counter, still recommends a cereal-based breakfast because it's an opportunity to get your daily dose of fibre. His salubrious muesli-style breakfast is exemplary of cereal done right - provided portion size is moderate of course:

"I have a mix of rolled oats, roasted seeds (sunflower and pumpkin), roasted almonds or pecans, diced dried apricots, sultanas, wheat germ, topped with sliced fresh banana, strawberries, blueberries or raspberries and low-fat milk or soymilk. It's a colourful, tasty, nutritious mix that starts the day with a healthy dose of fibre, antioxidants, protein and so on, and fuels the body right through the morning."

You can build your own cereal similar to his one, adding your favourite grains, dried and fresh fruits, and nuts.

Cereals and porridge

The Calorie King advises reading the ingredient list and nutritional information when choosing a cereal, to ensure it is low in sugar and high in fibre, and adding extra fresh and dried fruits to the mix. Be aware that some toasted muesli's can be high in added fat.

Healthier cereals include:

Porridge is a popular breakfast in colder months, but be wary of flavoured instant porridge which is highly processed and usually has a lot of added sugar. Go for regular oats and try adding grated apple, chopped banana, dried fruit or nuts and top with low-fat milk. A teaspoon or so of healthy flaxseed oil or ground LSA (linseed, sunflower and almond) can also be easily added to porridge.

CalorieKing.com.au member Skittzo suggests adding psyllium husks to your porridge for extra fibre, and topping with cinnamon, sultanas, low-fat milk and a sprinkle of brown sugar.