Beyond Eggs: Getting A Protein-Packed Breakfast

Essentia Nutrition and Diane Thao Show You How to Boost Your Protein Power in the Mornings

I’m here with Essentia Health registered Dietician Katie Barkley, she’s here to talk about protein booth in your breakfast. So Katie what can we do to add more proteins?

Well, protein is a macronutrient that we need to help build ourselves and keep them strong. It helps keep you full. It helps trigger the center of your brain to cause you to fill full. So when you’re eating a meal that contains protein, it can help you from over eating that meal. It keeps you from doing the mindless snacking from the other meals. So it’s really important for that. It keeps your blood sugar regular too. So people with diabetes and hormone imbalance, they need to have protein in their diet.

Do you mind telling us what are some recommendation levels that you recommend for protein in both men and women?

For women, the RDA level is 46 grams per day. For men, the RDA level is 56 grams per day. So right now there’s a big rush over the protein levels and some people are getting too much. And if you have too much protein in your diet, ultimately it can just lead to excess calories. So it’s important to have enough proteins but we don’t want to overdo it either. So with those RDA levels, we usually recommend anywhere from 15 to 20 grams a protein at each of your three meals.

What are some common breakfast that you can have and add protein?

One of the most common breakfasts that I’ve seen is a bowl of cereal with some milk. That breakfast by itself might have maybe four to eight grams of protein, which isn’t quite enough for what we want a breakfast to be. Some things that you can do to change that are to add crush nuts on top to add some protein. That by itself can add six grams of protein. If you choose a higher protein cereal like a Kashi brand that has extra protein and fiber that will add another eight grams or so. So doing little things like that can really add a lot of protein to your breakfast.

Thank you very much Katie for the taking the time to talk more about protein in your breakfast. I’m Diane Thao, KVRR news.