Waking up in the morning for school can be hard enough. Add in having to get up, make yourself presentable for school and leave the house on time, it’s no surprise that students often is the most “important” meal of the day: breakfast.

Breakfast’s claim on the title as the most important meal of the day comes from the fact that it is the first meal someone eats, they are “breaking the fast” from dinner. Since breakfast is the first  meal of the day, it has to be able to provide enough nutrients and energy to be able to get an active highschool student through a stressful day of classes and after school activities. Even today, out of the 65 students polled about whether they eat breakfast regularly only 42 students responded saying that they eat breakfast.

“It could be a scenario where starting that early, without breakfast, without some nutrition about maybe nine or 10 o’clock. Things may be a little bit more difficult to do, some of the school work or pay attention,” said Mark Haub, professor and Department Head of Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health at K-State. “Especially for those that do activities after school its critical have in the gas tank practices, whether it’s band, orchestra or sports, because those days can be kind of long.”

How students choose to spend their day is up to them, but having the proper energy to stay active and alert is based off of what they choose to start the day with whether it is just an apple or an actual cooked meal, having sources of healthy nutrition is what makes breakfast so important.  

“So I think a mix of foods by, but foods that have decent energy, carbohydrates and other nutrients,” Haub said. “Some people may agree to disagree but I think carbohydrates are an important aspect of that, as well as protein, I think those are the two are the two key ingredients.”

A decent breakfast consists of many protein options ranging from eggs and bacon to cereal. But not every breakfast option is the most beneficial like having toast, because toast alone doesn’t offer protein like the other possible choices. 

“I think the unhealthy options are when students might just get carbohydrate or sweet, sweet foods for breakfast and there’s no protein,” Haub said. “I think, probably a lot of students like Pop-Tarts for breakfast or something like a pop tart. But… it’s all sugar and that having just that can lead to some, some problems later in the morning.” 

While premade breakfast bars and snacks can make for a quick and easy option for breakfast, but even with easy options like those it’s still difficult for students to fit breakfast into their schedule.

“I think one of the big problems is sometimes people will get ready for the day. They think about breakfast, but they have to leave in five minutes,” Haub said. “And something you’re left with, ‘Okay, I’ve got four minutes to figure out what I’m going to eat and eat it,’ which makes it a problem.”

Fitting in time to sit down and eat isn’t as hard as people may think, understanding that to make the most out of your breakfast is to just plan ahead like you’d do with any other meal.

“You kind of have to have the mindset of ‘I’m going to make this an important part of my day,’ so that’s, that’s the mindset part of it you have to be ready to do it. One aspect is that to get ready before bed,” Haub said. “And so, in addition to brushing teeth and do the things that people would do to get ready for bed is have to check to make sure you either have the items for breakfast or even set those out, so that when the student gets up it’s ready to go. And so, that’s, it’s having the mentality.