Holy f#ck...
Morning beverages obviously avoid anything with MSG (monosodium glutimate) or aspartame, but also high fructose corn syrp, high lvls of sodium (which in an american diet with our foods most people get at least twice the amount of sodium a person actually needs daily). Heck you go to a fast food place and your meal will easily surpass the recommended daily sodium intake.
There is nothing wrong with sodium unless you have hypertension. Extremely high levels are bad, obviously, because they lend themselves to dehydration but in general "surpassing the recommended intake" isn't a big deal -- in fact, athletes (especially young ones) SHOULD be surpassing the daily recommended intake.
Morning what i do is usually a shake with a few raw eggs in. Raw eggs are great as is anything raw which basically means no cooking or high temps(pasturazation) which itself harms many of the proteins in the food. The chances of getting selmonela from raw eggs or milk is really slim i think eggs its about 30,000:1 unless the eggs shell is cracked then there is a much better chance of it being contaminated. In the spring and summer when the fresh fruits come around i will make a shake in the morning with straight fruit if its too thick i will add a little raw grass fed cow milk to it along with the 2 or 3 raw eggs(i find it much easier to put the raw eggs in a shake then to just toss three in a cup and gulp them down.
Raw eggs are a shitty source of protein and even worse for immunity. Raw egg whites are absorbed with MUCH less efficacy than cooked egg whites. The proteins in the yolk are absorbed with more efficacy when raw -- but raw egg yolks lend themselves to autoimmunity issues. Generally, the best way to eat an egg in terms of absorption would be to eat it cooked with a bit of a runny yolk, unless you are prone to an autoimmune deficiency. If you have really bad acne (can be mildly autoimmune) or lupus (horrendusly autoimmune) then you should avoid raw egg yolks. Eating raw egg whites is just stupid because very little of that protein gets absorbed. Its like burning money and food...its a waste.
An alternative to drinking a cup of coffee is to do a mild-very mild workout before you start your day. this will get your blood flowing and your body will thank you. I think you will be surprised by how much better you will feel in the morning if you perform a simple 15-20 minute yoga/intuiflow/etc. workout.
I agree - but a hardcore intense workout does the job MUCH better. In general, I prefer to do my high intensity work out in the morning for this reason. Cold shower works wonders too.
I personly limit my caffeine intake to at most a cup of tea in the morning which is significantly lower in caffeine content than coffee. The biggest mistake most people make with tea is the temperatures that different types of tea should be steeped in. for instance green teas should not be added untill the water has reached 175 F', on the other hand a black breakfast tea, having the most caffeine of teas about 50 milligrams per cup at most is steeped at boiling, and yes time does matter. Green tea drinkers will be very surprised if you brew the green tea at 175 f for no longer than 2 minutes some green teas need no more than 30 seconds. You can tell a cup of green tea that was not brew correctly it will be noticeably bitter, compared to the correct steeping. So last thing about teas is, if its coffee vs. tea tea wins out.
Tea is not better than coffee in terms of caffeine. Black tea, green tea and white tea (the only true teas) all have caffeine. My values may be off slightly, but a cup of coffee has about 80-100 mg of caffeine per 8 oz. Black Tea has about 75-85 mg, Green Tea has 30-60 mg and White tea has about 10-20 mg.
If you are going the anti-caffeine route then white tea is the only true tea that has significantly less caffeine than coffee. The alternative is herbal teas that are totally caffeine free such as Roobios (Red Tea) or totally herbal teas like Chamomile, Sleepytime, etc. For this reason, I only drink Red Tea since it has even more antioxidants than Green Tea with no caffeine naturally. Another alternative is to steep your green tea, dump it, then steep it again with the same bag...that way you get anti-oxidants with about half the caffeine.
Another thing i do not think most people are privy to is that the only time the human body needs milk is in the infant through child stage of life, adults do not need any milk and our bodies were not made to drink milk after the beginning stages of life. If you dont believe me look it up. i could find a link and show you the data direct but if you are curious look it up. Im not 100% sure on the exact science leading to this claim but i am positive that i have read in more than one place that the adult body does not require milk(even something about the evelutionary process, and how we developed and adapted to the "American Diet"). But where do we get our calcium then? you ask. dont worry without milk the body, with a healthy diet you will get enough calcium.
The only time you need to run is when you are being chased by someone or something that is trying to kill you. Does that mean you shouldn't run at any other time?
Drinking milk has its positives and negatives and, in the right context, can be an awesomely powerful tool for athletic performance and body composition gains. In other contexts, it can be harmful or counteractive to the goals. I don't know where this blindsided attack against milk came from but you need to do a little more research and get a bit more exposure to something before branding it as evil out of the blue.
In terms of calcium, though, you're right.
So lets see morning/breakfast "The most important meal of the day!"
Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. In fact, depending on the context, it might be MUCH better to skip breakfast than to eat it.
The rest of the my diet is dependent on what i am doing if i am hiking 30 miles a day obviously my body is going to need many more calories than if i am painting or reading, but no matter what i am doing i found it is better to split the day into 5 or 6 smaller meals rather than the 3 a day norm.
The 5-6 meals a day is a matter of preference. In general, it doesn't really matter. But if you are a woman trying to lose weight on a diet that has only 1200 calories...then good luck eating six 200 calorie meals and not being suicidal...
another interesting diet is the all raw diet, which my younger brother eats, he is a bio-chem major a bucknell university 4.0 graduates this spring so he is no idiot. he makes a probiotic drink is mass quantities for himself and our family he also sells bottles of it, though he has to put on a lable not for human consumption this is because of the FDA's anality about private enterprises. he only eats eggs and meat that are free range grass fed no hormone etc. but i have seen him blend up a cow liver and drink it or eat raw hamburger/steaks he has never gotten sick from any of this and he even had a doctor do very extensive blood work on him all at the doctors perogative, because the doctor was interested if my brothers lvls and everything were affected by his very high intake of iron, to the doctors surprise his iron lvls and others were all at a very healthy lvl. This all raw diet is much safer then the food companies would like you to think. I mean Catsup is made from tomatoes and they dont give a hoot if the tomatoes are rotten they just put some chemicals in to block the rotten taste along with alot of salt/sodium. well i ramble so any questions or concerns let me know.
With due respect to your brother - he's a bit off base. There is no real benefit to eating everything raw and it makes your life incredibly difficult. Just because he got a 4.0 in bio chem means absolutely nothing when it comes down to nutrition. Thats like saying someone with a PhD in rocket science is an expert on how to raise elk. The two domains are totally different with virtually no overlap...so thats not a very convincing argument to me. That aside, I have met people with a 4.0 in nutrition and don't know wtf they are talking about either.
That aside, all raw diet makes no sense from any perspective - nutitionally, evolutionarily, socially, etc. Now I am not saying that its goign to kill him, I am just saying that it makes things needlessly difficult and may actually be counterproductive if he had actual strength or performance related goals. This is because to eat raw food, it is incredibly difficult to get the quantities of food that are necessary to facilitate recovery and muscle growth...especially if you are avoiding milk and are a hard gainer.
