How To Get Your Family To Eat Breakfast

By : Jodie Shield | 0 Comments | On : September 2, 2013 | Category : Adults, Kids, Seniors, Teens

Beat-the-clock breakfast tips!

By: Jodie Shield, RD

Daycare, school, work – for today’s busy families, the morning rush hour is about more than traffic.  Everyone is in a mad dash to finish homework, brush their hair and teeth, and pack lunches before racing out the door. Squeezing in a quick breakfast hardly seems worth the time.  However, if anyone in your family is a chronic breakfast skipper, sound the breakfast alarm.  Breakfast is arguably the most important meal of the day and nobody should leave home without it. Eating breakfast helps both kids and adults maintain a healthy weight, concentrate and perform better at school and work – and there are plenty of studies to back this up.

Since September is Eat a Better Breakfast Month, be sure to follow my next few blog posts.  I’ll be featuring all kinds of tips and recipes to help you and your kids rise and shine and enjoy breakfast time.  First up on the breakfast menu, beat-the-clock breakfast tips from my book Healthy Eating, Heathy Weight for Kids and Teens.  These time-saving tips are guaranteed to help everyone eat a healthy breakfast when they’re in a hurry.

• Give me five! Reset the alarm clock so that everybody gets up five minutes earlier. The extra time will give kids the few minutes they need to eat a quick breakfast.
• Get organized! Each night before school, make sure that everyone’s homework is competed and in their backpacks.  Also, have kids decide what they want to wear and lay out their clothes before going to bed. Another time saver is to pack lunches in the evening and keep them in the refrigerator to grab and go.
• Tune out distractions. Every minute counts! Turn off the TV and ask tweens and teens to stop texting and put away their cellphones.
• Keep quick-to-fix foods on hand. Stock up on healthy, ready-to-eat breakfast foods like instant oatmeal, whole grain cereal, homemade granola, whole wheat frozen waffles, whole wheat bread and bagels, bananas, fresh berries, tomato juice, fat-free yogurt, low-fat milk, hard-boiled eggs, and peanut butter.
• All for one and one for all. Get up before your kids and make a large pot of oatmeal or a batch of whole wheat waffles that are ready to eat as soon as they enter the kitchen.
• Divide and conquer. Give everyone a breakfast responsibility.  Somebody pours the milk, another person toasts bread, another scrambles the eggs. Make sure everybody takes turn helping with clean up, too.

Breakfast is a healthy way to start the day. No more excuses.  Which breakfast eating tip are your going to try first?