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9 hours ago
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The Commonwealth Games opened in Glasgow earlier this week. As the athletes limber up and engage in protein-maxxing (or is it carb-maxxing?), getting ready to compete, it made me wonder: what is the best breakfast food, or combination of foods, to set you up in the morning? Not necessarily as a top-tier athlete, but simply as someone who is ready to go out there and win the day.
Tom, Tunbridge Wells
Send new questions to [email protected].
Readers reply
One that stops you feeling hungry until five minutes before lunch. yogainspain
Sauteed mushrooms with a hint of garlic in fromage frais served on a slice of lightly toasted, freshly baked authentic French baton spread with the very best Normandy butter. Delicious, and truly the breakfast of champignons. ThereisnoOwl
Last night’s leftover curry, with the sauce fully mixed into the rice so all remains moist, placed within arm’s reach of the bed. For real champions, washed down with brown ale. Jason90
Last night’s leftover takeaway curry and a bloody caesar. Kill or cure. unclestinky
Egg salad sandwich. Patti Powell, Little Rock, Arkansas
Steel-cut oatmeal. Everybody knows that. Jay Robinson, by email
A leader on a residential course for the national professional qualification for headship opened day one with the question: “What is the breakfast of champions?” The answer, apparently, is “feedback”. Twenty years on, it has stuck in my memory. Ben Greene, by email
Champagne. RBEtuta
Cheesecake. dfic1999
Breakfast isn’t really breakfast unless it’s turkey with all the trimmings. EddieChorepost
Wasn’t that the favourite saying of Suleiman the Magnificent? bricklayersoption
Only when he got Hungary. EddieChorepost
Microwaved poached egg (one glass, one teaspoon of water, 35 seconds) on bread, coffee. Puncture the yolk. Alkahest
No breakfast through the morning, then, around lunchtime, a high-fibre, high-protein first meal plus a couple of portions of fruit and some coffee. Leaves a clear head through the morning, then carries you through the afternoon and sets you up for an evening meal. Dorkalicious
Same as the lunch and dinner of champions … a bar of chocolate. adogsatonmypizza
For me, it will always be bircher-style muesli. I like to mix together a bag of frozen berries, a kilo of yoghurt and a few cups of oats in a big Tupperware and keep it in the fridge for breakfast all week. MsUnderstanding
A flatmate used to buy two kebabs on the way back from the pub, eat one straight away and keep the other for his breakfast. Salt, fat, carbs, spices – perfect hangover cure. Randomusername222
Lester Piggott, the 11-time champion jockey whose struggle with his weight was a feature of his career, breakfasted – so went the mythology – on a cigar and a cough. Not many calories there. NationOfSimian
A rollie and a large mug of black coffee. manicstteacher
A five-egg omelette cooked with finely diced peppers and onion, accompanied by sauerkraut, kimchi and kombucha. A glass of water and a cup of tea or coffee as preferred. Delicious, and keeps your gut happy. GrasmereGardens
Cold pizza and warm beer. (For sports hero wannabes the morning after.) DavidGervais
Black coffee, toast and salty butter. All the major food groups there (starch, fat, salt, caffeine). Might add a smear of honey or jam if I feel like pushing the boat out. SharonHoward
Pasta or rice with chicken or fish, or scrambled eggs on toast, according to the nutritionist of Spain’s football team. A little soy sauce is permitted. alexito
A mashed sardine mixed with finely chopped onion and balsamic vinegar on a buttered rice cake. Absolutely delicious, though one’s breath leaves a bit to be desired. PatDavison
A poached egg on toasted wholemeal with Marmite, seeds, sourdough with some roasted tomatoes drizzled with olive oil, followed by a large portion of mixed berries with Greek yoghurt, all washed down with sparkling water with half a lemon squeezed into it. Zenthewonderdog
Broth (miso and chipotle paste) and noodles, perhaps with frozen peas. Followed by pinot grigio. mathurin
A couple of six-minute boiled eggs, a bagel with salmon, cream cheese and capers, a bowl of Weetabix, OJ and coffee. Covers a lot of food groups and fills you up. Twenty-five years or so ago, when I used to drink, my answer was a pint of ice-cold Diet Coke: it used to work wonders in the morning and early afternoon. catchytitled
Salad, according to the recent article in the Guardian. TobermoryNightlife
Coffee, cigarette, spanakopita. Nepthsolem
“Sex, breakfast of champions!” is an old chestnut no one seems to have mentioned so far. exlangrandeflaneuse
Surely it depends on the champion. A champion sumo wrestler probably needs a different breakfast from a chess champion. Goldgreen
Chorizo, the cooked salami-style one, sliced lengthways into fairly thin rashers, cooked slowly so the spiced fat runs, eaten dunked into the yolk of an egg fried in the fat. Some buttered toast would be good here, too.
The waitress in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Breakfast of Champions says “breakfast of champions” to every customer she serves a martini to. There must be something in that. adamcgf
Porridge made with water, plus a dollop of full-fat Greek yoghurt, sprinkled with a nutty granola or mixed seeds. Or both. Not enough to weigh you down, but keeps you going till lunch and great for the gut. Spockle
Scrambled egg, served with diced tomatoes on the side, lasts me till lunchtime without any initial over-full sensation. Some chives are a nice addition, if I have them. nigeljones
Longer term, the best strategy to win at life may be to skip conventional breakfasts completely. Athletes have all sorts of reasons for specialised diets, but there is increasing evidence that staying healthy into later life might mean restricting the hours we eat.
The scale of trials is small so far, but it appears that eating meals over eight to nine hours has advantages in reducing the incidence of dementia compared with the same food intake over 12 hours. The basic regime started with healthy foods and reducing intake by 500 calories a day, but adding a shorter eating period came out ahead.
The studies effectively meant eating meals between 10am and 6pm. The findings may well be linked to the fact that our metabolism responds more effectively to food around the middle of our waking day than it does at the extremes. For example: “The body releases the most insulin – the hormone that helps move sugar from blood into cells – from 12-6pm, and the lowest during sleep.” There’s a whole body of evidence that the more recent trends of extended snacking over 14 hours or more is one of the worst possible ways to organise your food intake – with a whole heap of factors that are probably contributing to that. leadballoon
But does it have to be in the morning? I felt best when my schedule supported intermittent fasting, but for me something like 7am to 4.30pm. I can’t sleep on a full stomach and love waking up ravenous. bitthebeat
My platonic ideal of breakfast consists of plain, high-protein Greek yoghurt, berries or other fruit and a sprinkle of muesli. The protein keeps me full, the muesli gives good mouthfeel and the berries are high in flavour and antioxidants. This breakfast never bores me (ooh, pomegranate pips today!). I have been eating this every workday for over 10 years. Perhaps thanks to all of the antioxidants, I’m not dead yet. Rebekah Zinn, Olympia, Washington
The true Breakfast of Champions is by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Alternatively, good black Mexican coffee. Huevos rancheros with fried bananas and frijoles de olla. Buen día to you all! Gerardo Martinez Casas, Mérida, México
I’ve radically changed my eating patterns over the last six months and breakfast has changed more than anything else. First, I eat it much later, about 11. I’m usually up by six and just have coffee and then a walk. Somehow, this routine seems to suppress my appetite. I have 5% fat Greek yoghurt with chopped peanuts, cashews, walnuts, flax seeds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds along with half a chopped banana, apple, satsuma, raspberries or strawberries and a few blackcurrants. It’s totally delicious and usually keeps me going till dinner at about 7. Mark Fletcher, by email
I had lurched from one unhappy breakfast to another through much of my life. My gut is not my strongest organ. So when one of my older mentors suggested steel-cut oats [coarse oatmeal], as a recent retiree, I decided to give it a try. The results are very successful. No indigestion an hour after breakfast. My gut is so much happier and so is my cardiovascular system. All kinds of odd cravings are now gone. It’s very affordable and local (there is an oat processing mill in our neighbourhood). I make my oats a week at a time in a rice cooker, with a handful of raisins, and heat up each day’s breakfast in the microwave. Fred Tepfer, Eugene, Oregon
Maybe nothing other than a cup of coffee if I was playing an important match or a big run. PeteTheBeat
Black. 50% vodka. Jason90
Every fibre of my being desires fibre for breakfast. Sagarmatha1953
I’m afraid the Breakfast of Champions is in a glass case in the department of ancient history. There was a place in Brighton, the Market Diner, which shovelled out a creation called the Gutbuster. This was long, long before the Ministry of Marketing, Advertising, Publicity and Foul Lies invented the “full English” and similar terms of nonexistent japery. It consisted of nearly everything on a decent caff menu, apart from perhaps Spam, on one plate.
It was so effective as a breakfast of champions that after successfully tucking one inside, if there was the slightest squeak from a notorious family of troublemaking Herberts, all that was required was to breathe Gutbuster halitosis on one of ’em to have the whole clan fleeing over the South Downs, shrieking in terror.
It wasn’t bad value, either: lovely caff, good people and not greedy. There’s probably a poncey version called The Nonpareil or some other nonsense lurking between Shoreham Harbour and Roedean, but nothing will ever equal the “Gutbuster”. bricklayersoption
Little Chef used to provide Olympic breakfasts (though possibly not at the behest of the IOC). EddieChorepost
Predictable, but porridge and toast will keep you going till lunch. Nothing fancy. Oats, 50/50 milk/water, salt, sugar or sweetener and dried or tinned fruit with local bakery-made wholegrain toast with butter and jam. Nothing overprocessed. You need fuel to keep you going. Olddogandgrump
Pure OJ, dish of mixed fruits, three Weetabix with whole milk and two poached eggs with a large, crispy rasher of bacon. Good coffee. DeborahGeller
