What do kids eat for breakfast where you live?

We all know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. According to this source, a healthy breakfast should contain some protein (meat, eggs, beans, or soy like tofu) and some fiber (that can be found in whole cereals, grains or in fruits).
Yet for the past two years my children have been drinking chocolate milk and nibbling on bread for breakfast. On good days they will also have a fruit, a banana or orange, but they're usually not very hungry in the morning. Apparently, it's not just my kids. Most French kindergarten and elementary schools have decided to maintain a snack time around 10am every day to compensate for poor breakfast habits.
I remember when I was young and visiting my family in South Korea I would have a copious meal every morning. And though things have changed a bit in the last 20 years, a lot of Korean kids still have rice, meat or fish, vegetables and a soup for breakfast.
Which makes me wonder, even if milk and cereals seem to be quite universal among kids, what do your children eat for breakfast where you live?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rachel Mosteller 11-17-2006 @ 10:42AM
My daughter is on a yogurt kick right now. I love it because boy, is giving her yogurt easy. If it isn't yogurt it usually is either eggs and toast or oatmeal.
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Tara 11-17-2006 @ 5:14PM
I have 2 year old twins. Whole grain waffles with maple syrup (small amt of syrup) and/or cereal. The waffle is split by 3/4 for my son, and 1/4 for my daughter. Sometimes they don't even finish that. As for the cereal it's about 1/4 cup dry. Milk added for one twin, not the other.
At 10am they drink 8oz of milk as a snack. Maybe I am feeding the "unhealthy" cycle by letting them expect the snack. But it works. It's easy. They're happy and healthy. Is it necessarily wrong? I don't think so.
On average my twins just aren't big eaters anyway. either with quantity or variety.
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Uncle Roger 11-17-2006 @ 5:37PM
For the longest time, Jared had to have his toast-and-peanut-butter for breakfast. Fresh ground PB, no jelly, on sourdough. Sara was big on cereal and milk. Lately, though, they've been getting a lot of eggs.
Plus milk, of course.
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Mamacita 11-17-2006 @ 5:23PM
When my children were small, their favorite breakfast consisted of boiled eggs, blueberry muffins, and orange juice. When they got into upper elementary school, they wanted lunch for breakfast, and their favorite became grilled cheese sandwiches, fruit, and milk.
I prefer lunch for breakfast, myself. I like traditional breakfast food, but I'd rather have it for dinner.
I suspect that both my kids are now having cold pizza for breakfast, but they'll live. I did.
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southerncharm 11-17-2006 @ 5:22PM
Pop tarts, frozen waffles, cereal. I have teenagers so it's pretty much anything they can eat in a hurry. If it fits in a toaster or bowl they eat it. :-)
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Meghan 11-17-2006 @ 5:53PM
My daughter would eat a full-on breakfast with eggs and bacon and toast and juice and fruit salad and fried mushrooms every morning if I would let her.
That happens maybe once a month, though. Most days she has yoghurt, a piece of fruit (pear or banana, usually), and either dry cereal, crackers, or rice.
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Jill 11-18-2006 @ 10:07AM
Mine have cereal or bagels usually. I wish I pushed protein on them more often. Occasionally I make extra french toast and freeze it to go in the toaster on weekday mornings, usually eaten smeared with jelly. (You can pop it in still frozen!) Growing up, mostly as a teen in a hurry, I ate oatmeal muffins that my mom baked on weekends. She'd make them for the whole family, but double the recipe and toss some in a ziplock to freeze and then microwave.
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Kim 11-17-2006 @ 6:39PM
I love breakfast and wish I had more time for it. (I'm pregnant so I make up for it with "second breakfast" at 10am....)
My son is 19 months and loves a mix of applesauce (various flavors), plain whole milk yogurt, and oatmeal baby cereal. Some days we do hot oatmeal but usually with the same mix of yogurt and applesauce. I look forward to him being interested in feeding himself, but he's not there yet. He tops it all of with organic "cheerios"-like cereal, which he would eat three times a day if I would let him.
The rest of the day he's pretty inconsistent. Loving something one day, throwing it on the floor the next. Only at breakfast do things stay mostly the same day to day.
He also gets "snack" at school at 9:30, which is often more hot cereal and fruit, or muffins. He's definitely not going hungry!
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Terri Mauro 11-17-2006 @ 7:00PM
My son eats dinner leftovers for breakfast more often than not. This morning he had pasta with broccoli rabe.
My daughter, a natural morning person, gets up way earlier than I do and makes her own breakfast. Come to think of it, I have no idea what she eats. Frozen waffles, I think.
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Lauren 11-17-2006 @ 7:04PM
Margot has one scrambled egg and oatmeal for breakfast every day. Of course right now, she is 18 months old and eats what ever we give her, so she is uber healthy. Once she starts her food idenpendence and refuses to eat anything but ketchup, we might have to adjust. :)
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Alyssa 11-17-2006 @ 9:46PM
I have 5 kids, and they usually each have just a bowl of cereal or a toasted bagel, maybe a pop-tart- who has time to "cook" breakfast?
I must be a bad mom!\
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Tamyu 11-17-2006 @ 10:54PM
We`re in Japan, so what we have for breakfast is probably pretty similar to what is common in Korea. Usually a bowl of rice with seaweed, a bowl of soup, grilled fish or meat, and a side of vegetables.
How do I have time to make it all? Uncooked rice goes in the cooker when I go to bed, timed to be ready in the morning. Vegetables are left over from dinner the night before, fish/meat is tossed in the griller with a timer, and the soup is just left to boil while I`m doing the other morning stuff. By the time my son is up, dressed, and ready to eat everything is done.
Of course I imagine things will be a bit more hectic when my son actually has to go somewhere - he`s not yet in school so no real need to rush.
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Uly 11-18-2006 @ 12:39AM
Oatmeal. Every day, it's "What do you want for breakfast, Ana?" and I get told "OATMEAL! PLEASE!"
Every. Day.
It's starting to disturb me slightly - but then, I don't like oatmeal :)
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R Biernesser 11-18-2006 @ 1:57AM
I do not eat breakfast a lot, which I know is a bad habit and I'm not teaching my son anything.
what my son eats depends on what I got at the store. He eats ceral (whatever cheap stuff I brought that week and it usually isn't good for you), yogurt, eggs, suasage-n-eggs (ketchup on all things eggs), cim. toast, breakfast bar and a fruit cup (now those, I rise the syrup out of it), pop-tarts, sausage-n-biscuit. Whatever I have on hand he eats. He is a picker eater and I usually can get him to eat more breakfast food that lunch or supper.
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Rachel May 11-18-2006 @ 12:48PM
What's wrong with a (healthy) 10 a.m. snack? I teach high school, and we allow our students to eat a healthy snack (fruit, pretzels, yogurt, PB and crackers, no candy/soda/etc) in their third period class (10:00 a.m.). It helps keep their blood sugar level up between breakfast and lunch, which helps them to concentrate. It's healthier to eat smaller amounts throughout the day than three big meals, anyway.
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Robin 11-18-2006 @ 2:59PM
Israel also does the 10AM snack, and most people don't do breakfast (except true junk). We do cornflakes and milk most mornings.
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jen 11-19-2006 @ 1:48PM
My son is 15 months, and eats breakfast at 8am, and a snack at 10am, and lunch at 11.30/12. I upped his breakfast intake once he started walking (the boy is a dynamo!) but noticed that despite this, he needs a snack at 10am or is a hypoglycaemic mess by 11am, and doesn't have the energy/temper to eat lunch properly, so I give him a piece of cheese or ricecakes as a brief snack. He burns it up fast (like his daddy) - he's always been like that - a skinny baby and svelte toddler. I guess it's good as I won't have to worry so much about obesity when he's older.
For breakfast, he has one of the following: scrambled egg and toast, marmite toast (do you have marmite over there? it's yeast extract, a bit salty but chock full of B vitamins), raisin toast, porridge with fruit (dried apricots/frozen blueberries etc), a whole banana and fresh berries (blueberries, strawberries, raspberries). I have tried him on pancakes with maple syrup (no thanks mum!) and french toast (ditto). Sometimes he has weetabix, but I don't like the amount of salt/sugar these commercial cereals have in them, and I can only find a limited supply of organic/no-salt cereals here. Sometimes I make pudding (fruit crumble with oats/bread and butter pudding/rice pudding) for my husband and I, which my son gets for breakfast the next morning.
He feeds himself everything now, so I have to choose stuff that's easy to eat, and decide on what 'mess factor' I can deal with that early in the morning ;) Porridge, weetabix, or eggs get left for weekends, as my husband gets breakfast duty those days (am so mean!)
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