Chris Rosenbloom
Cox News Service
Aug. 13 2007 8:17 pm
ATLANTA - As high school students return to the classroom and the playing field, parents need to provide more than uniforms and athletic shoes to their children. This school year, start providing your athletes with a breakfast training table.
A training table is where athletes eat, mostly found at the collegiate or professional level. It is designed to provide the foods and fluids needed to support training and competition. "Most studies find high school athletes consistently under-eat," says Susan Kundrat, a registered dietitian and certified specialist in sports dietetics for Northwestern University athletes. "High-performance nutrition can be the difference between being a good athlete and a great athlete."
Breakfast is a critical meal for athletes for several reasons. After sleeping through the night, the carbohydrate stores in the liver are about 80 percent depleted, so eating breakfast helps to replenish those losses.
Breakfast also aids fueling and hydrating an athlete for practice later in the day and helps those trying to gain muscle mass. Getting high school students to eat breakfast requires some creativity; they would rather sleep an extra 15 minutes than eat breakfast. It is no surprise that surveys show that 18 percent of kids ages 13 to 17 skip breakfast.
What should be on your breakfast training table? Athletes like variety, so here are some suggestions that will help your student athletes get off to a great start.
Monday: Whole-grain hot cereal, such as oatmeal, served with blueberries, blackberries or strawberries and chopped walnuts, pecans or almonds. Or try the new Quaker Simple Harvest instant multigrain cereal made with oats, wheat and barley. Add a glass of low-fat milk and 100 percent fruit juice to provide protein and fluids.
Tuesday: Egg-white omelet with diced bell peppers and ham, a whole-grain bagel and 100 percent fruit juice.
Wednesday: Whole-grain waffles topped with diced peaches, hard-cooked eggs and 100 percent fruit juice.
Thursday: English muffins topped with a fried egg, a slice of cheese and Canadian bacon. Add low-fat milk and a mixed-fruit cup.
Friday: Whole-grain toast topped with peanut butter and sliced bananas, a container of yogurt and 100 percent fruit juice.
For those mornings when athletes don't eat breakfast at home, Kundrat suggests "breakfast bags." Trail mix, peanuts, sunflower seeds, soy nuts, yogurt, juice boxes, fruit cups, dried fruits, cereal or granola bars, bagels, muffins and sports drinks are "easy to pack and easy to snack on on the way to school," Kundrat says.
Zucchini-Cranberry Muffins recipe
Nutritional bonus points: Freeze these tasty muffins for a take-to-school breakfast or between-class snack. They are a good source of potassium, a nutrient needed by athletes.
Chris Rosenbloom, Ph.D., R.D., is a professor of nutrition in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Georgia State University. She'll answer nutrition questions of general interest. Send your questions to her c/o The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Eighth Floor, 72 Marietta St. N.W., Atlanta, GA 30303. Or e-mail her at dietitian AT ajc.com.
