From poha to idli, Indian breakfast options are often touted as healthy. But how healthy are they really? In this edition of Indian Food Decoded, HT Lifestyle spoke to Meghna Tiwatia , senior nutritionist at Nutrition In Sync, to break down the reality of poha, one of India’s most popular and widely considered healthy breakfast options.
Also read | Is poha good for weight loss? A nutritionist explains the best way to eat poha without gaining calories And here’s where it gets interesting. Research has shown that your first meal can actually influence how your body responds to the next one. Meghna highlighted that when healthy adults skipped breakfast, they had a significantly higher blood glucose response after lunch, even though the lunch itself was the same. In other words, what happened at breakfast affected how their body handled food later in the day. You don’t need to replace the food you grew up eating with some fancy healthy breakfast from Instagram. You just need to learn how to build your everyday food better. Poha isn’t the problem; an incomplete breakfast is.
This is known as the “second meal effect”. Poha can absolutely be a healthy breakfast, according to Meghna.
