Cottage Cheese, Orange, and Pomegranate Protein Bowls

Power up your your morning with this protein-packed breakfast bowl made with low-fat cottage cheese, pistachios, hemp seeds, orange slices, pomegranate arils, and coconut chips. Kid friendly? You bet it is!

Each serving has 25 grams of protein.

I always tell my children that the best part of my day is my morning cup of coffee. Can you relate? It’s warming and gives me the jolt I need to get the day going. While my boys can’t relate (just yet), they can relate to being hungry in the morning. Heck, they’re hungry all the time. Growing kids, and all of us for that matter, should eat a nutrient-rich meal in the morning (especially protein), but more times than not, breakfast is sort of forgotten or gobbled up quickly in the form of a piece of toast or a bowl of cereal.

My Cottage Cheese, Orange and Pomegranate Protein Bowl takes minutes to make (slice up an orange and you’re pretty much done) yet it’s packed with muscle building protein: 25 grams per serving to be exact. {Read more about the power of protein at breakfast further down in the post.}

The inspiration for my new and nutritious recipe comes from this month’s Recipe Redux cooking challenge to break out of the usual breakfast boredom with something you’ll be excited to wake up for. That pretty much sums up my protein bowl 🙂

In January, I attended a conference in London where Stuart Phillips, PhD from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada spoke about the role of dietary protein in health. {His session was sponsored by Daisy Brand Cottage Cheese.} His specific focus was the elderly, but my takeaway was this: In order for all of us to maintain and gain muscle mass, it’s best to consume high quality, nutrient dense protein foods and to space them out evenly throughout the day.

The longest period of muscle loss in your day is when you are sleeping, so it makes sense to refuel by eating plenty of protein at breakfast. (If your kids typically grab cereal or a bagel in the morning and nothing more, this is the post for you!)

Something else to consider is the type of amino acids you consume. Leucine, an amino acid found in cottage cheese, chicken, beef, salmon, and eggs, acts as a “trigger” by turning on the process of protein synthesis, so it’s a good idea to include these foods in your daily diet.

So how much protein do you need at every meal? What amount of protein is recommended to optimally stimulate muscle protein synthesis? According to Dr. Phillips, “It appears that the doses are quite low in young persons and get progressively larger with age. We recommend, to optimally stimulate muscle protein synthesis (MPS), that a young person consume 0.25g protein / kilogram / meal and an older person 0.4g protein / kilogram / meal.”

For simplicity sake, a person who weighs 100 pounds (or 45 kilograms) needs anywhere from 11 grams of protein per meal to 18 grams; someone who weighs 150 pounds (68 kilograms) would need 17 grams to 27 grams protein at each meal depending on age.

Cottage Cheese, Orange, and Pomegranate Protein Bowls

 

Author: Liz

Nutrition Information

• Serves: 2

• Serving size: 1 bowl
• Calories: 330

• Fat: 15g
• Saturated fat: 2.5g
• Carbohydrates: 29g
• Sodium: 520mg
• Fiber: 5g
• Protein: 25g

Recipe type: Breakfast

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Cottage cheese is rich in a type of amino acid called leucine, a "trigger" that turns on the process of protein formation. If you use ¾ cup cottage cheese called for in this recipe, you'll get 25 grams of protein. Cut that portion down to half a cup -- something more suitable for younger kids -- and each serving has about 20 grams.

Ingredients

• 1½ cups low-fat cottage cheese
• 1 orange, peeled and sectioned
• ⅓ to ½ cup pomegranate arils
• ¼ cup shelled pistachios, roughly chopped
• ¼ cup toasted, unsweetened coconut chips, optional
• 1 to 2 tablespoons hemp seeds
• Honey, optional

Instructions

1. Divide the cottage cheese between two bowls and top each evenly with the orange slices, pomegranate arils, pistachios, coconut as desired, and hemp seeds. Drizzle with honey as desired.

Notes

Each serving has 60% vitamin C and 25% calcium.

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