4 vegan breakfast recipes, not only for vegans!

You don’t need to be full-time vegan to enjoy a vegan meal. Vegan foods are rich in nutrients, help prevent diseases like cancer, boost your mood, support your diet, and even your skin and joints benefit from them. In this article we show how to start the day with a tasty vegan breakfast.

Reasons you should never skip breakfast

You’ve heard it; we’ve all heard it… you should never skip breakfast! Let us explain.

What are its health effects in:

• Metabolism:

Once you are awake, blood sugar levels drop and you are in need of a good enegy yielding breakfast that can kickstart your metabolism. Having a healthy breakfast at least 2 hours after waking up is a recommended way to boost your metabolism, making your breakfast an ally if you are in a weight-loss journey, or just trying to maintain normal body weight. Not only you’d be helping your metabolism but also providing your body with energy to go through the day while on diet; and also avoiding hunger that can lead you to overeat or get an unnecessary snack in the middle of the moring.

• Heart functions:

Skipping breakfast is associated with hypertension, insuline resitance and elevated blood sugar levels. In addition, people who skip their morning meal are more likely to have clogged arteries. Other heart conditions such as heart attacks and high cholesterol have also been associated to bad habits in people’s diet. When it comes to blood sugar levels, skipping the first meal of the day in the morning can result in insulin levels to drop and then peak after lunch, meaning it can be a potential cause for Diabetes type 2.

Be conscious if you follow vegan diet

How to avoid deficiency diseases?

Given the fact that vegan diets contain only plant-based food, vegan people are susceptible to suffer from important nutrient deficiencies for not eating the right amounts needed by the body; for example, vitamin B12 and amino acids provided by protein. In contrast, viegan diets contain higher fibre and carbohydrates, at the same time that provide a wide range of micronutrients.

Vitamin B12 sources for vegan diets can be fortifies foods like vegan spreads, breakfast cereals, yeast extract and milk alternatives. Eating these foods twice a day is a safe way to prevent B12 deficiency, but additional supplementation is also recommended, specially to provide your body with the missing amino acids.

Some concrete ways to avoid deficiencies and the diseases associated with them are consuming 5 portions of fruits and vegetables distributed througout the day, using alternatives for milk such as soy, including beans, chickpeas or plant-based protein sources, and also keeping up the carbohydrate intake with starchy options like potatoes, pasta or rice.

What is the ideal macronutrient ratio for a vegan breakfast?

In general, a ratio of 25% protein, 30% fats and 45% carbohydrates is recommended. But if you really want to dig into the macronutrients distribution on your plate, a ratio of 25-30% protein, 30-35% fat and 40-45% carbs is a good option to explore.

It is important to highlight that every body works differently so, at first a lot of trial and error would need to be done for you to see how your body feels at different food ratios.

What are the best ingredients rich in protein?

When we are not talking about vegan diets, in order to have a diet with all the protein your body needs, you must focus on what are called complete proteins. What is a complete protein? A protein is considered ‘complete’ when it has the essential amino acids required by the human body in somewhat equal ratio and amounts. Complete proteins include proteins of animal origin, for example meat, fish, eggs and milk products. In contrast to animal proteins, plant-based proteins are considered incomplete source of proteins. But as various plants contain essential amino acids in different combination, you can combine foods to make what is called complimentary proteins. You can also read about plant-based proteins here.

Some of the highest vegan protein sources are:

• Seitan: 25g per 100g

• Lentils (whole, cooked): 18g per cup

• Edamame (Shelled): 17g per cup

• Black beans (whole, cooked): 14g per cup

Healthy ingredients for a vegan breakfast

Here are some ingredients you can adopt to make a vegan breakfast. As a general rule, preference should be given to untreated foods, whole seeds and unmodified industrially, which retain their full content of vitamins and trace elements.

• Fruits and vegetables in general (bananas, spinach, broccoli, asparagus in particular)

• Legumes such as peas, beans (white and red), lentils

• Nuts and oilseeds

• Bread, rice, pasta

• Alternatives to dairy products like soy, coconut and almond milk.

• Vegetal oils

• Peanuts

• Pumpkin seeds

• Cereals

• Soy

All of these foods allow you to make a variety of dishes – porridges, smoothies, pancakes if we’re talking about breakfast, for example.

If, on the other hand, you don’t have time to eat during the day, a vegan protein powder shake is an excellent initiative. At BioTechUSA we have Vegan Protein, an excellent choice for all vegans and which quickly provides all the amino acids needed by the body.

In the following paragraph you can see the recipes of some dishes which have a vegetable basis.

4 delicious vegan breakfast recipes

Here are four possible recipes for a successful breakfast:

Scrambled tofu

• Chop the tofu and use a fork to break it into bite-size pieces.

• Heat some oil in a saucepan and add the tofu and all the other ingredients (you can customize it with any ingredients you prefer). Stir and cook over medium heat for 5 to 10 minutes.

• Serve immediately on toast and garnish with fresh parsley.

• If you don’t want to use the oil, add a little water to the pan instead.

Porridge

The dish very simple to make, it will take 50 g oatmeal, 250 ml of almond milk, and a sweetener if you wish, and a small pinch of sea salt.

• Just heat the milk and add the oats, salt and sweetener.

• Let it cook for a couple of minutes and then leave it cooling down.

• Adding any extra ingredients you want, like fruits and nuts.

English muffin

For 6 muffins:

250g wheat flour (whole if possible), 5g fresh baker’s yeast, 15g powdered sugar (white, whole…), 160ml almond (or soy) milk, 20g fat (margarine without hydrogenated fat, almond puree, organic fresh butter… even coconut butter!), 1 tsp fine salt, and a little fine semolina.

• Warm the milk gently over low heat, dilute the yeast and sugar.

• Mix the flour with the fine salt and the fat in a bowl. Incorporate the dough with your fingertips.

• Make a well in the center of the bowl, pour in the milk.

• Mix everything with a spoon then by hand. Finish with 5-10 minutes of hand kneading.

• Form more or less a ball and let rest for 1 hour at room temperature in the bowl covered with a tea towel to prevent the dough from drying out (which would have the effect of slowing down the growth of the dough).

• Roll out the dough with a rolling pin, keeping a height of about 1.5 cm.

• Cut 6 muffins with a cookie cutter about 9 cm in diameter. The last muffin will be made by collecting the leftover pasta that you can lightly knead.

• Sprinkle each side with fine semolina, and let swell again for 1 hour, always covered with a cloth.

• Bake for about 20 minutes at 180 ° degrees, serve with the coating of your choice.

Banana-oat protein dumpling – made with BioTechUSA Vegan Protein

For this recipe you will need: 1 cup of oatmeal, 1 banana, 30g of Vegan Protein from BioTechUSA, 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder, 1 tablespoon of flax seed flour, 1 tablespoon or more of maple syrup.

Optional: 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, cinnamon to taste, fruit garnishes.

• Mix all the ingredients to prepare a very consistent dough.

• Form little dough balls.

• Heat the pan over medium-low heat.

• Add the dumplings and cook, flipping them regularly.

• Serve with maple syrup.

And there you are, you are ready to go! Enjoy your vegan breakfast!