Breakfast
Whole-grain cereal + banana + milk
The backup breakfast for the morning the night-before plan did not happen. Ninety seconds, no pan.
- Servings
- 1
- Total
- 3 min
- Skill
- Easy
What you need
Ingredients
Making for
1 serving
- Whole-grain cereal1 cup
- Bananas1 each
- Milk1 cup
Quantities scale linearly with servings. Round to the nearest practical amount when shopping.
Steps
- 1
Buy the right box once and this recipe is solved
Turn the box over. You want whole grain as the first ingredient and under 10 g of total sugars per serving. Plain shredded wheat, unsweetened oat squares and most bran flakes clear it. Almost nothing with a cartoon on the front does, including the ones labelled made with whole grain.
- 2
Cereal first, banana second, milk last
One cup of cereal, one sliced banana, then one cup of cold milk poured over. In that order the banana sits on top instead of sinking, and he can see what he is eating, which matters more at 7am than it should.
- 3
Add something with protein or expect to hear about it by 10am
Cereal, banana and milk is mostly carbohydrate, and on its own it runs out before lunch. A boiled egg from the fridge, a string cheese, or a spoon of peanut butter stirred into the banana slices closes the gap. Milk alone gives you about 8 g of protein and that is not enough on a school morning.
Coach's notes
- Whole grain is doing real work here. The fiber slows how fast the sugar arrives, which is the difference between steady and a crash on the bus.
- Sugar on a label includes what is naturally in the grain, so a plain cereal reading 4 or 5 g is fine. It is the 12 g and up boxes that are the problem.
- Slice the banana straight into the bowl and you have nothing to wash but the bowl.
- Any milk works. Whole, 2%, or unsweetened almond if dairy is out, though almond milk brings almost no protein so the protein add-on matters more.
- This is the fallback, not the plan. On a training day the overnight oats or the eggs will hold him longer.