Health Benefits of Eating Breakfast - Reasons For Eating Breakfast

The health benefits of eating breakfast extend throughout your day, making it the most important meal of the day. Consuming a good, hearty breakfast is like priming a pump, to help your body get ready for a full day's worth of activity. Not only does the first meal of the day heat up your metabolism to better burn calories, studies show that the effects of this "jump start" help keep the metabolism working at a higher rate throughout the day. Blood sugar levels rise up and remain higher longer, instead of having a quick drop off that might be generated by eating just high sugar content breakfast snack foods. Skipping this important meal does you no good at all. You will be hungry sooner, eat more later, and not have the good energy to function efficiently.

Additional health benefits of eating breakfast include an increased ability to use your brain, an excellent idea for those younger ones who need to pay attention at school. Some dieters have found that they have better success by flipping their food intake, having dinner for breakfast and typical breakfast foods for dinner. The higher caloric intake at the breakfast meal allows the body to function better all day, and the impact of a good breakfast helps the body become less hungry at later meals. The body can burn off the higher calorie levels all day long, instead of having food sit idle at night, turning into fat with inactivity. Calories burn faster in the morning, following the breakfast meal, and the body metabolism slows down near nighttime.

Being able to eat more food is another of the health benefits of eating breakfast. You can actually eat more with a good balanced breakfast followed by a moderate lunch and lighter dinner. People who skip breakfast eat more snacks during the day, and have heavier meals later. It is easier to incorporate protein, fiber and fruit into typical breakfasts. Breakfast eaters exercise more because they have the energy to do so, making personal fitness a by-product of eating healthy breakfast meals.

Tangible health benefits of eating breakfast include a boost in concentration, energy and productivity levels. Eating high fiber breakfast foods like cereal, fruit, grains, nuts, and yogurt are lower calorie than snack foods like doughnuts or sweet rolls. They give you needed bulk in your diet, last longer, help you feel full and less hungry longer. High protein breakfast foods like eggs, milk, and meats are good breakfast foods, but watch out for the fats like butter and cream cheese. Always take fats in moderation.

Eating breakfast will improve your overall nutrition, and help reduce the risk of heart disease and regulate cholesterol. Breakfast is important to body metabolism by breaking the fast of sleep time; long term fasting does not allow you to produce the enzymes needed to metabolize fat to lose weight. Extensive studies on this topic have been done by researchers at the Cleveland (OH) Mayo Clinic and Harvard University/Massachusetts General Hospital.
By Wendy Pan 

Fun Facts About the Kiwi Fruit

Even though it has a larger size and an outer skin with fuzz, the kiwi fruit is really a berry. Chinese khans in ancient days used to consider the kiwi to be an aphrodisiac. Kiwis aren't bothered by very many irritants, so crops don't require much pest control. Kiwi pickers in California wear cotton gloves so they don't bruise the kiwis.
The original name of the kiwi was the Chinese Gooseberry. It was originally grown in China, over seven hundred years ago. Later on, it was introduced to New Zealand, and then California. California kiwi were first grown in about 1960. The average kiwi fruit is about three inches long, and weighs about 2.5 ounces. Nearly ten percent of kiwi grown in California are grown organically.
The vines of the kiwi are deciduous. They will remain dormant from November until March, and the foliage falls off, which makes the pruners' job easier. All of the pruning on a kiwi plant is done by hand. New leaves start coming out in March. The canes of the dormant kiwifruit are great for flower arrangements.
Kiwis grow like grapes, on shrubs like vines, which are trained to grow on trellises. Their height ranges from five and a half feet to six feet. The vines of the kiwifruit drink in water in the summertime. Each vine drinks about forty one gallons of water a day, in the growing season. Kiwi fruit continue to grow after they are picked. It will ripen as it heads off to the sales markets.
The kiwifruit was originally found in Northern China, in the Yangtze River valley. Missionaries took seeds to New Zealand in their travels, at the turn of the century. It became a popular plant there, and several vines were sent to California. Those very vines are still growing in the Chico Plant Introduction Station. Kiwi are also grown for resale in areas like Chile, South Africa and Italy.
The kiwi plant needs a relatively long growing season, including at least two hundred and forty days without frost. Therefore, there are many areas in the United States where it is not possible to grow them. When the kiwi vine is in its dormant stage, in the winter, it can withstand temperatures as low as 10 degrees F. But they need to be acclimated to the cold slowly, not hit with it all at once. If a sudden and deep freeze hits, the freezing may cause the vines to split, and the plant will die.
Temperatures in the freezing range will kill any kiwi fruit buds that are exposed, so care must be taken to select an area with a mild winter season.

By  Jenny Styles