What did you have for breakfast today?

If you helped yourself to bacon and eggs, good for you. But if cereal and a glass of juice are more your speed, you’re getting off to the wrong kind of start.

A new study finds that your choice of morning meal can actually set your body up for the rest of the day’s eating.

Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham fed mice either a high-fat breakfast or a high-carb breakfast. They found that the mice that ate fats in the morning were better able to process the variety of foods that come along during the course of a day.

They basically had normal metabolisms, according to the study published in the International Journal of Obesity.

The carb-eating mice, on the other hand, had metabolisms that seemed locked in on carbs for the rest of the day. Even when they were eating other kinds of foods, their bodies were focused only on carbs.

And by the end of the day, these mice had higher weight gain, increased glucose intolerance and other risk factors for metabolic syndrome as a result.

Sound like anyone you know?

We’re a carb-crazy society in general… but at no time is that more obvious than breakfast. Toast, bagels, pancakes, cereals and all that orange juice we drink in the a.m. add up to a recipe for metabolic syndrome and all the problems that come along with it.

Just look around and you can see the damage it’s doing to us, and not just at breakfast time. We’re eating the unhealthiest carbs morning, noon and well into the night. For many people, those sugary cereals might be the healthiest food they eat all day.

But the new study also confirms how fatty foods, on the other hand, can help you to eat less overall. Fats help you to feel fuller for longer periods of time, and the researchers found that, by the end of the day, the fat- eating mice had consumed fewer calories overall.

We already know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day… but this new study is an eggs-cellent reminder of how to make sure you start yours off the right way.