Some days, a typical omelet breakfast may not cut it when you want to have something delicious yet healthy. On such days, you have many wholesome food options to pick from, such as a yummy matcha banana smoothie bowl, oatmeal, yogurt parfait, or a popular choice, the delicious avocado toast.
Avocado toast is a wildly famous breakfast item loved by all fitness gurus. Moreover, most people who embark on their fitness journey are told to have a hearty avocado toast as breakfast, brunch, or mid-day snack. Simply put, it is a wholesome meal ranked among the healthiest foods there are.
Considering the explosive popularity of avocado toast, it’s only fair to wonder why it is so healthy. Do people count it as a nutrient-dense, heart-healthy dish because they have heard others say so, or do they have scientific reasoning behind it? If you have had your doubts about avocado toast and its health benefits, you have come to the right place. In this article, we go over all the properties of avocado toast that make it healthy (or unhealthy).
What Makes Avocado Toast Healthy?
It is a well-established idea that avocado toast is good for one’s health, but why is that the case?
The primary reason it’s considered a wholesome dish is the use of the green fruit that gives this food item its name; avocado.
Avocado is loaded with heart-healthy unsaturated fats that are excellent for a person’s health. Due to this, it’s assumed that anything containing avocado is automatically healthy. However, that may not always be true.
Many times people can misconstrue the idea of avocado being healthy and don’t take the quantity they consume into account. As a result, they end up consuming more fat than needed.
While the large-seeded fruit is wholesome and beneficial for the body, it shouldn’t be eaten in large quantities at a time as doing so will increase your daily fat consumption. Therefore, experts recommend using 1/3rd of an average-sized avocado on a single toast.
However, many people aren’t aware of that and cut up an entire avocado to have on their toast. Due to this, their oh-so-healthy breakfast becomes not-so-healthy.
Long story short, you need to control how much of an avocado you layer on your bread in order to have a hearty, healthy meal.
Apart from unsaturated fatty compounds, avocado has a high concentration of fiber. Having a substantial amount of fiber is good for the digestive system as it helps with the movement of food through the gut. So, eating avocado toast may be the right call for you if you have bowel problems, such as constipation.
Concisely put, an avocado toast will serve your body in the best way possible, provided that you are watchful of the quantity.
Moreover, it must be noted that avocado toast has many other toppings, which can also take up or lower the health quotient of your dish. For this reason, you need to be careful about what you put on top of your avocado toast.
Things to Consider When Having Avocado Toast
As already mentioned, avocado is healthy, so when you eat it on a slice of bread, the whole dish will most likely be beneficial, provided you control the quantity of avocado and other ingredients you use.
Be Careful of Fat-Rich Toppings
Fried bacon, cheese, and butter are items that are a must-have in breakfast. This is particularly true in the case of butter because it is slathered on pretty much every baked good we use in our first meal. For instance, croissants, bread, pancakes, muffins, buns, and waffles are all breakfast staples, and butter is their complimentary add-on.
All that is to say, it’s hard to resist having butter in breakfast, but you need to control your cravings if you wish to monitor your fat intake.
If you have avocado toast in the morning and are loading your bread with the green fruit, you will have to forego the butter. The same goes for cheese and bacon. If you want to go heavy on avocado in your toast, you need to avoid adding any more fat-dense items. If you don’t do that, you will cancel out the benefit (or at least diminish it) of eating avocado toast.
Don’t Forget To Add Protein.
While avocado is rich in good fats, it lacks protein, which is essential for the human body and must be a part of every meal you have. This means you need to bring a source of protein to your avocado toast to balance it. There are many ways to do so
One of the most commonly used ingredients to increase the value of protein in avocado toast is the energetic egg. Eggs are full of protein, so if you add one on top of your slice of bread, you can make up for the lack of protein in avocado.
You can either fry your egg in olive oil or boil it and cut it to layer it on top of your avocado toast. To finish off your breakfast, sprinkle some black pepper over the egg.
Besides eggs, you may mix in Greek yogurt with avocado and make a batter of sorts. Then slather it on the bread as you do with butter.
Choose Your Bread Wisely
If there is one thing that the toxic diet culture has taught us, it is that white bread is a big no-no. While white bread may not be the healthiest bread option, it is not something poisonous that you must not have.
It will not harm your health if you take it in moderation. However, if you are on a weight-loss journey or are health conscious in general, you might want to switch to wholegrain bread or bran bread. Those two are healthier as all of their nutritional compounds are not sifted out, like white bread.
That said, occasionally having white bread under your smashed avocado is not the end of the world. You can alternate between your wheat choices for a change of flavor.
Ending Note
To sum it all up, yes, avocado toast is healthy for you, but you need to be careful about how you make it for yourself. If you load it with unhealthy, calorie-dense ingredients, it will lose its health value. Therefore, be mindful of what you add to your healthy breakfast or brunch dish!