Make my day

Curious to find out if what she ate in the morning affected how well she did during her school day, Charlotte set up a laboratory experiment to find out what was the best brain-food breakfast.

She already knew eating Froot Loops sent her, well, a bit loopy. “I could always tell if I had something sugary. I’d be alert for a time, but then I would crash until I had something better to eat.

I always felt better on mum’s breakfast.” ‘Mum’s breakfast’ was a mix of protein and carbs — things like toast and eggs or, even better, beans on toast or cereal and yoghurt. The then-Diocesan Girls School student was selected for the Liggins Institute’s Student Science Programme after entering her Year 10 science experiment in the 2006 Auckland Science Fair.

That experiment was called ‘working worms’. “Working worms was about having worms in your garden; they help your vege garden. But I chose not to continue with this experiment, as I had come to the end of my investigation.” Which is where the munching mice came in.

Charlotte’s mum often told her she didn’t get enough (or the right) breakfast. “We had some small disagreements,” says Charlotte. While she wanted Froot Loops or Coco Pops, her mum wanted her to have “protein and carbs, like toast and egg and bacon, to keep my energy up”.

For her Liggins research project, Charlotte decided to test if what you eat for breakfast affects how you learn. “I couldn’t do it with people as they’re too hard to control, so I chose mice,” she says.

Four mice — named Minnie, Millie, Molly and Mandy — duly ate six different breakfasts devised by Charlotte: one was high in carbs, one high in fat (equivalent to a fast-food breakfast), one high in sugar (like Froot Loops), and another high in protein. There were also two balanced breakfasts: Nutrigrain and a product called Mouse Chow.

Mouse swimming pool

To test which breakfast was best, Charlotte used a Morris Water Maze — a kind of mouse swimming pool with an island in the middle. The idea is for the mouse to swim out to the island. The mouse is then taken out for half an hour then put it back in.

If the time it takes for the mouse to swim to the island decreases the second time around hopefully that means the mouse has remembered; if the time increases, or stays the same, it means the mouse hasn’t learned and the food it has eaten is not good for learning, says Charlotte.

How did the mice do? The highfat breakfast was definitely the worst (so stopping for a burger on the way to school is not a great idea). The highsugar breakfast was second-worst, followed by the high-protein option, then the Mouse Chow.

Nutrigrain was the next best breakfast, but the high-carb option came out tops. Charlotte says according to a University of Ulster study the ultimate breakfast is baked beans on toast, as this gives you protein and carbs (and it’s cheap!)

“You need all this because protein builds up cells and kicks in when the carbs run out, but carbs are really necessary to get you going. But you need sugars, too, as they give you a burst of energy, and vitamins and minerals.”

So what does Charlotte eat for breakfast? Usually, she has cereal with milk and yoghurt, which equals high-carbs with protein (the yoghurt particularly). But if she’s got a big day ahead, it’s eggs and bacon — hopefully prepared in a low-fat way such as grilled, boiled or poached.

And what happened to Charlotte’s mice when the experiments were over?

Charlotte says she couldn’t keep them, as she has a cat and a dog. “Eventually they went to a pet shop where they have a list for mice,” says Charlotte, “so they all went to really good homes.”