Cereal

Wake up in the morning, stumble out of bed, maybe don a robe, maybe just head to the bathroom to shower or splash some water on your face.

You go to the kitchen, put on the coffee, you find a bowl, you then fill it with cake and cover the cake in milk.

That's right, cake, not cereal. That is, you may as well have cake.

On a calorie-per-gram basis, there's absolutely no difference between your standard breakfast cereal and a box of prepared cake mix. I'm not even talking about the ones that are demonstrably analogs of desserts, but also the supposed 'healthy' cereals.

Kellogg's Rice Krispies Treats Cereal or generic bran flakes, either way you may as well just bake some cupcakes and serve those to your children, or just give them $5 and point them toward the nearest Dunkin' Donuts.

The calories present themselves to one's system in the same way as well. Low-fiber, high-refined-carbohydrate foods give you a short burst of energy, but that wears off well before lunchtime, leaving you dragging.

So, what should I have for breakfast?

A balance of protein and carbs attacks the later-in-the-day sluggishness from a different front, as it takes more time for the body to break down protein into something useful, meaning that eggs or lean ham combined with perhaps whole wheat bread or even rice would help with the midday sluggishness and give you a good jumpstart for when the sugar in the coffee wears off. Problem with this though is hydration - a meal like that gives no extra benefit when it comes to the necessity of keeping hydrated.

Of course, there is another option: Salad.

Breakfast Salads are an idea whose time has long since come. Something without dressing, a mix of greens and fruit would also attack the body's energy deficits throughout the day. The sweetness of fruit represent sugars, carbohydrates easily used by the body. Fruits and vegetables are special in that they combine carbohydrates with fiber.

The fiber is largely undigestible in the human body, and that's what makes it special! Fiber can slow the absorption of both sugars and water, acting as sort of a time-release vessel in the body. Because of that, the other carbohydrates and starches also take longer to digest, meaning that a morning meal of fruits and vegetables - a breakfast salad - will keep you hydrated and well-fed well into lunchtime.

If you're not eating some kind of plant in the morning, you may as well drink cake batter. The choice is yours, I'm not judging!