WHAT are your children having for breakfast? Breakfast is still the most important meal of the day.

Yet, about one-third of primary school children from various states around the country surveyed by Nestle and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia were found to skip breakfast.

Nutritionist Cher Siew Wei, who is the corporate wellness manager for Nestle, believes that while everyone knows that the first meal of the day is important, not everyone is applying that knowledge.

According to the survey done in 2007-08, about one-third of the children said they skipped breakfast or that they never had breakfast. The top three reasons given were that they were not hungry; there wasn’t enough time; and they had no appetite.

Those who didn’t have breakfast also didn’t have milk or a warm drink in the morning.

For this group of children, their first meal would be at recess time at 10am or later.

“Even the children don’t have time to have breakfast. It could be because of the lifestyle – people are in a hurry in the morning to beat the traffic jam. So, the parents are in a hurry and the kids are also in a hurry. Nobody seems to have the time,” says Cher.

She encourages parents to include the three main food groups in every meal, including breakfast:

> Carbohydrates: The source of energy; try going for whole grain carbohydrates like wholemeal bread or whole wheat noodles or crackers.

> Protein: The source of growth and development. It can be tuna, scrambled eggs, cheese, or even peanut butter spread (which the kids can prepare themselves the night before).

> Fruits and vegetables: Can be added to a sandwich.

ParenThots features more tips on ensuring children get a good nutritional breakfast daily.

Book reviews

How Mothers Love gives voice to the mothers; it is about the joys of motherhood and also about the not-so-nice parts of motherhood.

Confessions Of A Scary Mommy highlights some hilarious truths and confessions from real mothers.

Readers write in

This week there are seven articles from parents writing in about how playing games helps them bond with their kids.

ParenThots is The Star’s parenting portal. For more information, e-mail parenthots@thestar.com.my or surf to www.parenthots.com.

• Best restaurants in Asia
• Yorkshire: England’s best-kept secret
• Snapshorts
• Google makes the world go round
• Who has the better chance of bagging that high-salary post?
• Love letter from a freelancer
• DÔME delicious
• The call of the Sahara
• A kink in the kindness
• Online guide for safari lovers