A survey conducted by Impulse Research Service for Heinz revealed that 85 percent of Americans agree that eating breakfast is important. However, the majority of consumers say they do not have the time for it. The much touted busy schedules and an increasingly fast-paced lifestyle have meant that Americans increasingly miss out on this important meal. Unfortunately, having breakfasts together as a family has also become a rare experience.
The survey was conducted in June 2006 and gathered responses from around 1,500 adults throughout the US. It found that more than 60 percent of consumers say it is “too hard†to find the time to have breakfast as a family. About 40 percent of families never prepare hot breakfasts during the week, while half of all families surveyed said they missed out on breakfasts together, even at weekends.
Analysis by industry expert and vice president of the market research firm NPD Group, Harry Balzer, suggests “cereal at one time was a convenient, hearty, healthy breakfast. But because of modern-day time constraints, it’s just not as convenient as it was perceived to be 20 years ago, primarily because it can’t be eaten on the go.â€
Cereal bars went part of the way to addressing this concern, but consumers need a “fuller†breakfast, Balzer said, adding that one way to make cereal an on-the-go item is to serve it with yogurt instead of milk. Some data shows the most popular breakfast items remain coffee and cereals, with yogurt also growing in popularity despite not being a traditional option for breakfast.
The trouble with this is that the foods themselves are extremely unhealthy. A vast number of people have allergies and sensitivities to grains, especially wheat, rye, oats and barley, the gluten containing grains. In addition, dairy causes very serious problems for many people and various other problems for virtually everyone else. Dairy is not the healthy food people have been misled to believe. Then there’s coffee – I won’t even start on that poison.
So come to think of it, if most people consume those foods when they do have breakfast, maybe they are actually better off by skipping breakfast, even though it should be a vital meal for establishing sound nutrition. People need to start listening to those who actually know what health is and stop listening to those who merely claim they do, yet prove otherwise.
