Want to start your day on a sweet note but still eat healthily?

Sweeten Your Start To The Day

There’s no better breakfast combination than wholegrain oat porridge, yoghurt and maple syrup. Oats are an amazing food, possessing a rich bounty of minerals and vitamins: calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, folate, thiamine and riboflavin, and Vitamins E & B and B6. They also contain a soluble fibre which helps lower cholesterol. Team them up with a probiotic yoghurt for breakfast and you do yourself a world of good. For some, porridge without a sweetener is too bland. Yes, it’s gorgeous with brown sugar, but it’s equally gorgeous with maple syrup, and a whole lot better for you.

Maple syrup

Maple syrup is not a sugar, it is simply the sap taken from maple trees which is boiled down to a syrup. Nothing is added to it to make it free-flowing or shelf-stable or to stop it crystallising. It has heaps of zinc and good supplies of calcium and iron, along with magnesium and potassium, so you don’t need to feel so guilty about having a drizzle or two on porridge, pancakes or French toast! But it must be genuine maple syrup, not an imitation made from corn syrup. Read all about maple syrup here, including how it is extracted from the trees, and how to use it, including in savoury dishes, too impart its complex smoky caramel flavour.

And get cooking oats for breakfast and help your body maintain healthy levels of cholesterol. It’s very good food, it tastes great and is super easy to make. And here’s another trick: follow the porridge with a piece of fruit which has plenty of Vitamin C, such as a kiwifruit, and it will help your body absorb and better utilise the iron that’s in the oats.