Newcastle University

New panel sets you up for the day

Leading nutritionist Professor Chris Seal is to play a key role in highlighting the benefits of eating breakfast.

The internationally-renowned nutritionist from Newcastle University is part of a new UK panel of experts who have been brought together to help us understand why eating breakfast is so important to our health.

Despite the fact that most health professionals recognise breakfast as the most important meal of the day, skipping it is common practice in Europe.

Britons skip breakfast over 30 per cent of the time, equivalent to 113 breakfasts per year.  Among teenagers the rate is even higher with almost half of all young people regularly skipping that all-important first meal of the day.

Professor Seal said the role of The Breakfast Panel was not only to inform and educate but also to carry out further research to help us understand more about how eating breakfast can boost our long-term health.

He explains: “It is generally accepted that breakfast is the most important meal of the day – after several hours without food, the body literally needs to ‘break the fast’ to renew our energy reserves and re-fuel the brain and body.

“There’s also growing evidence to suggest that people who eat a healthy breakfast are less likely to be overweight; that it improves our concentration levels – particularly in children – and that it reduces the risk of heart disease and certain cancers.

“The aim of the panel is to look more closely at some of these potential health benefits while acting as breakfast ambassadors.”

The new panel will meet for the first time on Tuesday, November 10.

FACTFILE

History of the breakfast

• Eating breakfast began in the late Stone Age.  Stones were used to grind grain to make porridge

• Porridge continued to be a favourite and was included in the diets of Roman soldiers and peasants in the Middle Ages

• The word ‘breakfast’ was first introduced to the English language in 1463

• The ‘full English’ was introduced in the early 1800s and became increasingly more lavish throughout the 19th century

• In 1892, Henry Perky developed the first ‘ready-to-eat’ breakfast cereal with his invention of Shredded Wheat.  Two years later, John and WK Kellogg invented the corn flake.