A doctor has spoken about what he eats for breakfast ‘all the time’ – and how it helps him to lose weight. Dr Rangan Chatterjee best known for his TV show Doctor in the House and for being the resident doctor on BBC Breakfast and as a regular contributor to BBC Radio said people should start having what they eat for dinner much earlier.
Appearing on the Doctor’s Kitchen podcast, Dr Chattergee said the key was having some protein as it staves off hunger for longer. He questioned why people have been brainwashed into having things like ultra processed cereal for the first meal of the day.
He said: “Who says that these are breakfast foods? And when you really dive into where this all came from and the marketing involved, it’s actually some cereal companies, right? We used to go to India for 6 weeks every other summer. I can still remember my cousins before they went to school, they’d have these big plates. There was like meats, vegetable curries, there was dal, rice, it was like a proper meal.
“And then I noticed after about 10 years you’re going back and like there’s all these adverts from the cereal companies.” Podcast host Dr Rupi Aujla replied: ”There’s that beautiful set of photos where they looked at what kids eat for breakfast around the world. It was done about 10 years ago. I come back to that all the time. What you see in the UK and the US are just these refined sugary cereals, and you definitely see that in certain other countries like Latin America and particularly in Brazil. But then you look at like Asia and it’s just like a hali, you know, like Sri Lanka was like a hali with some. Some I mean that’s the kind of stuff that I would eat for for dinner.”
Dr Chatterjee added: “Yeah, and one of the things I’ve often said to to patients to help them with this is eat dinner for breakfast.” Dr Aujla added: “Yeah, I do that all the time.”Yeah, I mean it’s a very simple way because we’ve got this idea of what a breakfast food is, but actually it wasn’t always.” Dr Aujla explained: “Protein at breakfast is a great strategy to ensure that you’re not overconsuming and improve weight maintenance.”
Avoiding snacking is the key to keeping weight off, Dr Chatterjee explained and he said: “I genuinely do not bring food into my house that I don’t want to be consuming. Sweets, chocolates, cakes, I don’t keep them at home. Because there will be an evening when I’m feeling tired and a bit stressed and I will start opening the cupboards and look for something a little bit sweet and all I can see at the moment are whole nuts and olives, and sometimes I’m like, ah, I’m not sure I feel like that at the moment. No it’s not really what I wanted. Yeah. So, again, in terms of what is practical for many people and my biases, the patients I’ve seen over the years. I think not using your willpower in your house is a great tool.
“And also, I think a lot of these principles depend, they depend where you’re at on your journey. Right, if you’re used to having loads of ultra processed foods, and that’s, you know, making up 70% of your diet, as it is for many people. Actually, to reset, maybe for a few months you don’t want that stuff anywhere near you, so it can, it can help you reset your taste buds, not be tempted. Yeah, think about it another way, and we don’t like to think about food in this way, but let’s say you were an alcoholic, right, and you were struggling with your alcohol consumption. And you recognise that and you start to get help. I think most of us would probably accept that whilst you’re trying to recover from that possibly not the best idea to have loads of beer and wine and booze kicking around in your fridge and in your house.”