Great news: there's a scientific excuse to eat ice cream for breakfast

I’m a big fan of eating things that you’re not meant to eat for breakfast, for breakfast. Like, cheese and cucumber sandwiches, or an entire packet of Bombay mix, or half a box of chicken nuggets that has mysteriously appeared on your bed in the morning, complete with dip that hasn’t completely spilled onto your sheets, so is definitely salvageable. Why should Big Breakfast dictate what you can and can’t eat in the morning? If I can have cereal for dinner, then I can damn well have a Pot Noodle for breakfast.

Or a bowl of ice cream, say. 

I mean, I personally have never done this, but I can certainly get behind the idea. I like ice cream in the evening, and I like it at lunch, so why won’t I like it in the morning?

And now I have a solid bit of scientific reasoning to throw in the faces of the ice cream detractors, enabling me to sit back, feet up, and slop a gloopy chunk of yellow cream down my grateful gullet.

That bit of reasoning is thus: according to Yoshihiko Koga, professor at Kyorin University in Tokyo, swapping cereal for ice cream can improve alertness and mental performance.

Koga gave a bunch of people a load of mental tasks to complete, some had ice cream after waking up (lucky), and the others did not (gutted). It turned out that those that had ice cream moustaches had quicker reaction times and were more adept at processing information. They also had higher levels of alpha waves, which are linked to alertness. Ice cream = super smart powers, basically.

He then did the experiment again, but instead of getting ice cream, the guinea pigs got a glass of water (GUTTED!!!), and he found that ice cream still provided higher levels of mental capacity and alertness.

Of course, there’s a good chance that this could all just be the indulgent work of a mad scientist who just really loves Carte D'Or and wants to stop arguments with his wife before work, so the experiment does have its cereal-loving skeptics. Like Katie Barfoot, a Nutritional Psychology Doctoral Researcher at Reading University, who, determined to ruin our fun, told The Telegraph:

“A possible explanation [for increased alertness]... is the simple presence of consuming breakfast vs. not consuming breakfast. Our brain needs glucose to function, and a high glucose meal will aid mental capacity considerably compared to a fasted brain.

“This, however, does not condone eating dessert for breakfast. A study which explores the interaction between consumption of low and high GI foods, whilst including a fasted group, would establish a better understanding of this increased mental capacity.”

Ugh, such a killjoy. Let me and my mate Koga eat our Soleros for breakfast, we’re not hurting anyone. It’s either that or a Vegemite omelette, and trust me here, spreading Vegemite onto an omelette rips it to pieces – nobody should start their day that angry. Bung a sphere of Neapolitan into my front orifice and I’m about ten times less stressed. The world is my oyster.

LET THEM EAT ICE CREAM.

(Image: Rex)