Having a balanced diet is an important part of living a healthy life. But while we are studying for our difficult assignments and grinding through all-nighters, we may forget to put enough effort into our diet. Many of us resort to snacking to satiate our hunger throughout the day.
But can we snack in a healthy manner? Absolutely. And for that, we will craft the ultimate healthy snack, if you will: cereal.
The reason why the ultimate snack is cereal is because the best time to be snacking is in the morning. Snacking later in the day has been associated with unhealthy eating behaviors such as distracted eating, and has also been associated with a high body mass index (BMI). In contrast, eating in the morning has been associated with healthier snacking behaviors — and what better morning snack can there be than cereal?
The pieces of the puzzle
For a healthy diet, Health Canada suggests a set of basic nutritional components that we should eat daily, and this ultimate cereal aims to provide all of them in a single bowl.
The important components are carbohydrates, lipids, dietary fibre, proteins, and different kinds of vitamins. To craft our healthy cereal, therefore, we will need raisins or other fruits, low fat milk, oatmeal, and nuts such as almonds.
First, let’s look at carbohydrates. They are broken down in our bodies into sugars and fatty acids, also known as lipids. In this recipe, none of the ingredients other than the oats are themselves contributing carbohydrates, but they each provide the things that the carbohydrates end up breaking down to.
Raisins are a great source of sugars because they are around 60 per cent fructose or glucose. Raisins are also rich in dietary fibre since, during the fruit drying process, some of the sugars turn into fructan, which is a specific type of dietary fibre. The only issue with this is that many of the other ingredients in our cereal recipe are also rich in fibre, and having the extra fibres from raisins might be too much for some people. You may find it better to use fresh fruits of your choice, which, before they’re dried, would only have trace amounts of fructan.
The other ingredients rich in dietary fibre are oatmeal and almonds. Oatmeal is a whole grain food that contains a variety of important nutrients, one of the main ones being dietary fibre. Dietary fibre is good for us because it helps us feel more satiated while also controlling the levels of lipids, insulin, and glucose in our blood. It has also been observed to decrease the risk of certain potential risk factors in health, such as obesity, by helping maintain a lower BMI.
The other ingredient that’s rich in fibre, the almonds, are also rich in components such as proteins. Proteins are a very important component for our bodies as they are involved in a variety of different bodily functions and processes, none of which would be possible for us to do without proteins. Nuts and seeds in general are a good source of proteins, and almonds are a great example of them.
Topping it all off with the most important ingredient
Another ingredient rich in proteins is milk, of course, and you can’t have cereal without any milk. Milk and almonds are also rich in fat, which acts as a secondary source of energy while also helping with growth and absorbing vitamins.
There are three kinds of fats: trans, saturated, and unsaturated. One important practical difference between them is that each of them results in a different kind of cholesterol in our bodies. The cholesterol generated by saturated and trans fats is considered bad for our health, whereas unsaturated fat creates cholesterol which is considered to be healthy. While we will probably have both kinds in our bodies, an overabundance of cholesterol from saturated and trans fats can result in plaque buildup in our blood vessels.
To mitigate the effects of bad cholesterol, we are using low fat milk in this recipe and substituting the excess saturated fat with healthier, unsaturated fat that comes from the almonds. While milk substitutes made of almond, oats, or soy, have similar components to cow’s milk, they are present in different concentrations. Cow’s milk is generally considered to have the ideal ratios, so it’s the best one to use unless you’re lactose intolerant.
Making sure that the things we eat are healthy for us can be hard sometimes, which is why having a reference for the basics that we need to eat can be helpful in crafting healthy recipes. But those recipes, like the recipe for the ultimate cereal, are open to experimentation. Maybe you don’t mind the extra fibres from the raisins, or maybe you prefer walnuts over almonds. Feel free to try different things to craft your own ultimate recipe that meets your health needs.
Bon appétit.
