Changing face of breakfast.

• Position: Food habits

Perhaps nowhere is the changing of the American lifestyle more apparent than with the first meal of the day. The tradition of a family sitting down to a full meal of eggs, bacon, pancakes, etc. has gone by the wayside--a casualty of modern-day time crunches as well as growing health concerns, explains Rachel Barkley. assistant professor of clinical dietetics, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

"The typical family today doesn't have the leisure to sit down to a breakfast meal. The fact that almost all of the fast food restaurants now offer breakfast items is one of the best indicators of this trend. Even at home, most people have switched from a cooked meal to cereals, fruit, yogurt, or microwave items."

While Americans are making the switch to faster breakfasts, at the same time they are leaning toward healthier items. "Throughout our history as an agricultural-based country, a large, high-fat breakfast made sense when a person was facing four or five hours of physical labor on a farm. However. most of today's jobs are much less physically demanding, so the extra fat is not needed."

While most individuals benefit from cutting out extra fat, "many people unnecessarily avoid foods which they perceive as unhealthy. For example, eggs are high in cholesterol, but they also are a good, inexpensive, and easy-to-fix source of protein which can be prepared in many low-fat ways. However, because...