Start the day healthy with a warm breakfast!
Athletes in particular can benefit from warm meals, as they can better absorb the nutrients. In addition, a warm breakfast is easy to digest, has a beneficial effect on your body and helps you lose weight. Read on to find out exactly how this works and more.
Find out more about the benefits of a warm first meal and get inspiration for your breakfast!
Breakfast for female athletes – the advantages with Verival
Why a warm breakfast is so healthy!
For your body, the question ‘Breakfast – hot or cold?’ does not arise. After all, it has to warm up to ‘operating temperature’ all the food you eat. So if you eat something cold, your body needs energy to warm up the food. Conversely, cooling down requires less effort.
A warm breakfast – TCM
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) also recognises the benefits of a warm first meal. According to the so-called organ clock, each organ has its active and rest periods. Since the stomach and spleen are at their peak from 7-11 a.m., the digestive process should be started here. This is best achieved with a warm breakfast: the body has to use less energy for digestion and the life energy is increased.
Indirectly, you can strengthen your immune system with a warm first meal, because according to TCM, a strengthened spleen has a strengthening effect on your entire immune system.
Benefits of a warm breakfast for athletes
You may be wondering: that's all well and good, but why should I eat a warm breakfast as an athlete?
Before we answer this question, you should know that exercise can lead to an increased nutrient requirement. To give an example: calcium, potassium and magnesium support the transmission of stimuli and thus muscle contraction. For functional muscles, you should therefore prioritise these minerals.
Often, your needs can be met by a healthy, balanced diet. You should only take food supplements after consulting your doctor.
Are you interested in the topic? Then read our detailed article on it right away!
Which vitamins and minerals are important for the body?
Absorption of nutrients
Let's get back to the original question! A warm breakfast is the ideal way to absorb these important nutrients. How does it work exactly?
The human body is not built to digest certain things. These include, for example, dietary fibres, which hardly change their structure in the body.
Therefore, especially with vegetable foods, you should not do without brief cooking or at least cooking! This is because humans cannot break down the cellulose present in the cell walls of plants. However, heating breaks down the cell walls and the complex sugars and vitamins can be better absorbed.
The best example is carrots: cooking them and adding a little fat makes the vitamins they contain (especially the fat-soluble vitamin A) more available to the body.
Since athletes in particular should ensure they have a healthy, balanced breakfast and get enough vitamins, a warm breakfast is especially recommended for them!
Another reason to have a warm breakfast is that it makes chewing and digestion easier for you. This way, you can support your body, especially with the first meal of the day, and have more energy for more important things!
Hot breakfast – what are the disadvantages?
Nevertheless, it should be mentioned at this point that there are some critical voices. The biggest point of criticism is that some vitamins, especially the water-soluble ones like the B vitamins, are largely lost through cooking.
However, without cooking, you would not be able to absorb some other vitamins at all. Besides, it depends on the food whether you should eat something raw or cooked. When it comes to porridge and, in particular, a healthy breakfast, the benefits clearly outweigh the risks!
Porridge – the ideal hot breakfast
But now we want to reveal what we consider to be an ideal hot breakfast! And that is porridge. This supposedly ‘simple’ dish offers a variety of advantages. The fibre it contains strengthens your intestines because it provides sufficient nourishment for the good intestinal bacteria.
What's more, oats are a real nutrient bomb: they cover 46% of your daily magnesium requirement and 27% of your iron requirement. In total, a bowl of Verival porridge provides a quarter of your recommended nutrients.
Did you know that oats keep you full for longer? Put simply, the water-soluble fibres begin to swell and dissolve in the body. This enlarges your stomach in a positive sense and you feel a sense of satiety. Eating oats is therefore particularly recommended if you want to work without interruption and not have your concentration interrupted by a growling stomach.
What's more, you can add toppings to your porridge as you like. Nut butters, seeds or fresh fruit, all of these are particularly suitable for a varied breakfast.
Hot breakfast recipe ideas – discover the variety from Verival
Sport Porridge from Verival – with all the nutrients athletes need
We have a special offer for all athletes and those who want to become one: the Sport Porridge cocoa-banana!
Thanks to the ground seeds it contains, this hot breakfast with oats provides enough protein for muscle building.
Thanks to the improved recipe, you can benefit from the positive properties of cocoa. Did you know, for example, that cocoa has a blood-pressure-lowering effect and contains a high proportion of iron, magnesium and copper? It's best to integrate the healthy plant into your diet at breakfast time.
Thanks to the natural sweetness of the bananas, no sugar is added to the porridge, yet it still tastes wonderfully chocolaty!
And another advantage: the easy preparation means you can whip up a nutritious, filling and, above all, warm breakfast in just three minutes.
