Easy, Healthy, Cheap Breakfast for Students

What is the first thing you think of when it comes to breakfast? I am pretty sure that most Malaysians will be thinking of Nasi Lemak and Teh Tarik. Most Malaysians have the mentality that breakfast always has to be heavy. But I do not object this because there is a saying “breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper”, but maybe there is something I object with this saying, it should be changed to lunch like a princess (because a fine lady always has to watch their weight). But as a student, what is the first thing you think of when it comes to breakfast? The right answer is excuses. They will say that they do not have time to grab a breakfast because they are late for class or because they wake up at 12 afternoons or another excuse is breakfast is too heavy and complicated. Either or, most students always find an excuse to skip breakfast.

The students actually do not see the benefits of taking their breakfast before they start their day. Taking breakfast is similar to “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. Breakfast can really impact our body physically and mentally in a good way. This is because a meal before breakfast is dinner and it has been fully digested after 8 hours of sleep and breakfast is a meal that will refuel our body with energy and nutrients to start our day. Students who skip breakfast will feel weak, less energetic and lack of concentration in class – these are the obvious symptoms that we can see for ourselves even though we think that 8 hours of sleep will get our body back to work but it is not. This will also make us eat more during lunch and our diet will be unbalanced.

The first reason why students should take their breakfast is because breakfast provides us more concentration in class. As I said earlier, breakfast is an energy booster to our body. Students who skip their breakfast will feel less energetic and this makes them lost their concentration in class. Getting to class early is a good intention, but students need to rethink about the next hours of class. Better to be early to class and lost concentration after 30 minutes of lecture or to be late for 10 minutes and understand the whole lecture? I guess all students prefer the second choice because taking notes and hearing all the words from lecturer are really important to score in finals. As proven by science, our body will be on low blood sugar every morning and when our body is low in blood sugar, it can cause us to feel dizzy and nauseous and this will contribute to the lack of concentration because you keep thinking why your body does not feel great.

The second reason is students will experience better mental health if they do not skip breakfast. Mental health is actually depending on our mood. Our moods really influence our mental health because brain is the center of our body and we really have to take care of it because when brain does not function well so as our whole body. If students skip breakfast, they will feel really hungry when they reach class. This is because, the storing energy is being used for shower, getting ready, waiting for bus and walking up the stairs. There are no people in this world will feel really happy when they are hungry if yes, there will be no starvation problem. Of course, we will feel not in the mood and feels really annoyed by anything. This bad mood will cause students to have stress. As we all know, stress is not a healthy contribution to our brain. But this does not stop there. When you are stressed out, you will treat other person badly, and probably they will also be stressed by your behavior and without you realizing it, your friends' mental health will also be affected and the people around you will feel those negative vibes. Having no energy, tired, feeling annoyed and getting angry all of sudden – if you have these symptoms that means you need to get breakfast starting the next day.

I am also a student and I understand how precious the time and money, so I will be suggesting easy, healthy and cheap breakfast that is suitable for students. First, the classic breakfast which is two half boiled eggs with bread – it will be enjoyed at its best with toast bread and if you cannot make toast bread then regular bread will be just fine. But to make it healthier, replace regular white bread with whole meal bread. It is an easy, healthy and cheap breakfast for students. They just have to have a bowl of hot water. Then put the eggs in the bowl and let it rest for about 5 minutes. After that, crack the egg into separate bowl or some people like to use glass and dip the bread. Or another way to eat it, put the half-boiled eggs on top of the bread and sprinkle some black pepper and salt on top of it. But it really depends on your personal taste. This breakfast maybe will cost you around RM 2 or less. Depends on how expensive your eggs are.

Second easy, cheap and healthy breakfast is, oatmeal. For students, I will suggest instant oatmeal because there is a reason why it is called instant. Some people just love to eat their oatmeal plain and simple but others like to mix it with fruits to make it tastier. I suggest that you eat your oatmeal with milk and if you are willing to spend some money, you can mix it with strawberry, blueberry or banana. You can also add some honey to your oatmeal. Food will be more interesting if you are able to experiment the taste. So, do not be scared and mix it if you feel that it is right. Everyone knows that oatmeal will help you with the hunger and boost you with energy because oatmeal is a popular meal among the people who are on diet. This meal will cost you around RM 3 or maybe more depends on what you are mixing with your oatmeal.

Third meal is, bread with spread of peanut butter or kaya and add on slices of banana on top. Or maybe you want to eat banana separately, it really depends on you. As usual, we will use a whole meal bread to make it healthy. Then you can choose your own spread whether you want peanut butter or Malaysian classic choice ‘Kaya’ or fruit jam or even Nutella. Of course, to ensure that you will not feel hungry when arriving to lecture, we will add banana to the meal because banana is high in carbohydrate which is 23 percent of the banana are made of carbohydrate. But if you feel like banana is too boring you can change it to berries. This super healthy meal will cost you around RM 3 also but the price will depend on what spreads and fruits you choose.

In conclusion, breakfast for students is really important because they will need the energy to keep the concentration in class and a healthy brain to score in their studies. Not just these, they also need the nutrients to ensure that they are in a good shape for studying and revising for exams. Breakfast brings a lot of benefits to human body and that is why breakfast is the most important meal of the day and we should not skip it. There are a lot more of simple, cheap and healthy breakfast that students can try out as long as they are willing to experiment with their food.