"Eat your breakfast, it's the most important meal of the day," is a phrase my mother was once very fond of screaming as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and made a break for the freezer and my usual two slices of toast.
‘Breakfast', in her opinion, meant something substantial, like eggs or porridge, and toast alone, she believed, just didn't cut it. Well, now there's the science to back up her beliefs – at least when it comes to the eggs.
British researchers examined the diets of nine men given a normal (0.8g) and an additional amount of protein (+0.6g) at breakfast, lunch and dinner, studying their fullness, hunger and desire in between meals.
They found appetite responded differently when extra protein was added to breakfast – namely that respondents felt fuller.
"Protein is found throughout the body – in the hair skin, nails, teeth, bone, every internal organ and in fact, virtually every cell," explain Dr Joanna McMillan Price and Judy Davie in ‘Star Foods'. "Proteins are also used as chemical messengers, enzymes and nutrient carriers in the blood. It's easy to see why protein is so important in our diets."
High protein diets were all the rage in the 1960s, and then fell in popularity with the rise of low-fat diets. Paying good attention to protein intake, however, has recently been linked to more successful weight loss, as well as heart benefits – so protein is again in the good books when it comes to healthy living.
As McMillan Price and Davie comment, here are some ways protein works to help you shift weight:
References available on request