Unless I'm eating with other people, food for me is fuel.

This applies to breakfast particularly. Like a scrambled fighter jet, I want the refuelling process in the morning to be as fast as possible.

Not eating is not a sustainable option for me. Higher functions slow as my brain begins to run out of glucose. I become slightly less human and slightly more lungfish. My mood drops.

Here are the major contenders who have competed in my search over the past few years for a fast and filling breakfast.

Fried eggs

Immediately flawed. Making fried eggs for breakfast everyday uses too much equipment.

The dish is also too slow to prepare, both when watching the eggs cook and when fishing for broken egg-shell fragments in a hot frying pan.

There is too much time spent cleaning up pans afterwards. As a hobby, I find scrubbing oil-and-egg stuck to a metal pan quite satisfying. But it's a hobby that I only allow myself to indulge in on weekends and public holidays, not at the careful moment of breakfast.

Huel

Huel is quick to prepare and easy to eat. You put powder and water in a bottle and drink it.

Unfortunately, Huel is not filling for me, regardless of the quantity. My time-until-very-hungry-again ('TUVHA') is about 90 mins with Huel. This is way too short. After 90mins post-Huel, my desk-side wooden clocks start looking appetising.

Blood sugar spikes are another problem.

During the period that I had a continuous blood sugar implant in my arm (for fun) this year, I watched Huel spiking my blood sugar in real-time. After adding Huel into the gastrointestinal mix, my blood sugar would climb like an impatient rollercoaster car, before dropping. For me, consuming Huel's "nutritionally complete" advanced drink-food - marketed at professional athletes - is sadly like eating cake.

I like the idea of Huel, and turning my eating experience into something like filling up a car at a gas station. But I don't want to eat Victoria sponge for breakfast.

Preparation time is also deceptively high. It is fast to dump powder and water into a shaker. But cleaning out the protein shaker bottle once it contains a half-liquid, half-solid slurry takes more time. This time increases if you delay washing the bottle for a morning, causing the Huel to behave like papier mâché. Such breakfast powders would make reasonable insulating materials if there is a construction supplies shortage.

Amazfit Complete

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Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith