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Monday, October 15, 2012

Breakfast With a Health Halo: How Vegetables Are Invading the Most Important Meal of the Day







Breakfast just got a whole lot healthier. While the starchy, sugar-loaded and syrup-drenched foods long associated with breakfast endure, they do so alongside an ever-broadening assortment of nutrition-centric creations. These menu items are all about delivering a potent punch of essential goodness in the form of vegetables and legumes that were once regulated primarily to the domain of later mealtimes. There’s hash featuring yams and zucchini, steamed veggies hugging eggs or tofu in whole wheat tortillas, and—perhaps the most extreme example of this shift toward a newer, healthier early morning meal—breakfast salads that combine a few familiar breakfast staples with an assortment of fruits and vegetables.

We should have seen this coming right? In some countries outside the U.S., vegetables with breakfast aren’t that unusual. After all, a proper Full English breakfast would be deemed lacking without cooked tomatoes, beans, and mushrooms. Even in America, vegetables at breakfast aren’t completely unheard of. At the very least, they make a semi-acceptable appearance as brunch items including asparagus with poached egg and hollandaise sauce and omelets with colorful jumbles of onions and peppers. Plus, one can’t forget our long history of drinking vegetables in the form of canned tomato and V-8 juice in the morning, or even the popular trend of consuming veggie-laden smoothies.

But according to The New Healthful, a report by Packaged Facts and San Francisco-based strategic food and beverage agency CCD Innovation, this emerging trend is different. This new healthful breakfast inspiration focused on vegetables is in ample supply and seemingly more and more in demand. Diners realize that sugary, starchy breakfasts won’t get them very far and are seeking innovative, more filling options that really give them something to chew on. Vegetables and legumes in the morning make particular sense for those going meatless or skipping meat and animal products altogether as they can fill out a sandwich, bowl, or plate in more nutritious ways. Beans are doubly interesting as a breakfast ingredient because they supply fiber in addition to protein.

The opportunities for restaurateurs to capitalize on this demand for veggies and legumes at breakfast are immense.


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