A leading gut health expert shared her favorite breakfast with Business Insider and the common breakfast items she no longer eats.
Breakfast foods like cereal are often overly processed, even though they’re marketed as healthy. So, Dr. Tim Spector, a British epidemiologist, gut health expert, and co-founder of science and nutrition company ZOE, has a breakfast combination that he eats every morning that’s balanced and gut-healthy.
“I used to have granola with skim milk, orange juice and tea, and I thought it was a very healthy breakfast,” she says.
But since switching to a more gut-friendly breakfast, Spector finds herself staying full “all the way until lunch,” and her energy levels are consistent throughout the morning.
This is breakfast now.
Yogurt with topping
Spector avoids bread, granola, muesli and cereal in the morning because they tend to be highly processed and contain added sugars. UPFs have been linked to a variety of health problems including increased risk of cancer and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Heidi Tissenbaum, an expert in healthy aging, previously told BI that added sugars are detrimental to health and longevity.
Instead, Spector has three to four tablespoons of full-fat Greek yogurt mixed with about 150 ml of kefir, which is fermented milk, and adds nuts, seeds and fresh or frozen berries.
She uses toppings from her variety jar, a handy container filled with a variety of nuts, seeds, and dried fruit that she keeps ready to sprinkle on foods and snacks.
She likes to drink kefir in the morning because it’s fermented, which means she can eat one of the three fermented foods she tries to eat every day before she leaves the house. Fermented foods were linked to increased gut microbial diversity and decreased inflammation in a 2021 study by researchers at Stanford University, with evidence suggesting they should be “a key component of a healthy diet.”
Spector drinks black coffee — but never orange juice.
Orange juice is “one of the worst things you can drink in the morning,” says Spector, again because of the amount of sugar it contains.
Instead, he drinks a cup of black coffee every morning because, he says, it is a “health drink.”
Coffee is “really good for your gut microbes, really good for your heart,” he said. “And if you can’t tolerate it well, drink decaf because it’s still good for your microbes.”
This is because coffee contains a number of soluble fibers and “defensive chemicals called polyphenols that are like rocket fuel for your gut microbes,” he says. A 2020 review of studies published in the journal Food Frontiers suggests that polyphenols are indeed good for gut health, and may also help prevent chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.
He says that coffee with milk and sugar is also beneficial, as it allows you to “drink all the good stuff” — he just recommends minimizing both as much as possible.
Correction: August 29, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the amount of fiber in coffee. Coffee contains some fiber.