You have probably heard that eating a healthy breakfast is important. After all, breakfast is often said to be the most important meal of the day. Its difficult to prove that any one meal is more important than another, but research does show that eating breakfast can lead to important health benefits.

Breakfast provides energy to start the day. This is especially important if you will be active in the morning, either through an early trip to the gym or if you have a strenuous job, but even people who are less active may find that they feel more alert if they eat breakfast and not just because of coffee.

Eating breakfast can help reduce hunger and overeating later in the morning or at lunch. This is why breakfast is often emphasized in weight loss diets. In fact, 78% of participants in the National Weight Control Registry report that they eat breakfast every day as a way to lose weight and keep it off. These successful losers have lost an average of more than 60 pounds, so their advice is worth paying attention to.

What is a healthy breakfast? Unfortunately, there is no specific answer to that question. Most experts would agree that a good breakfast should include a combination of carbohydrates, protein and fat but be low in added sugar. These broad guidelines suggest that there are many ways to create a healthy breakfast, even if it doesn't include traditional breakfast foods.

A better approach may be to identify foods that would be poor choices for breakfast. Chances are, if your breakfast doesnt include items from this list, you are on the right track. However, if any of the following are true about your breakfast, it could likely use some improvements:

I think everyone would agree that foods that are frosted are better classified as dessert than breakfast. That said, from doughnuts to Pop Tarts to breakfast bars, many unhealthy breakfast foods are covered with a layer of frosting.

Just like frosting, breakfast foods that contain marshmallows are probably better choices for dessert. Marshmallows are found in cereals, granola bars and other packaged foods that are almost always high in added sugars beyond the marshmallows.

A fruit smoothie can be a healthy breakfast, but a fruit smoothie topped with whipped cream is probably closer to a milkshake as far as sugar and calories are concerned. The same goes for coffee drinks. A mocha-caramel-latte with whipped topping may contain coffee, but it also has far more sugar, fat and calories than you might expect.

Research shows that eating chocolate may have health benefits, but the research involves consuming small amounts of dark chocolate, not chocolate donuts or chocolate-flavored cereal. Again save the chocolate for dessert.

More specifically, you got the food while you were in your car, which means it likely came from the drive-through window at a fast food restaurant. Fast food is just as poor of a choice for breakfast as it is for lunch or dinner.

Of course, there are exceptions to these guidelines. There is nothing wrong with treating yourself to a chocolate frosted doughnut once in a while. But if your daily breakfast includes items from this list, you could benefit from a breakfast makeover, and this list should help you avoid many unhealthy choices.

Dr. Brian Parr is an associate professor in the Department of Exercise and Sports Science at USC Aiken where he teaches courses in exercise physiology, nutrition and health behavior. You can learn more about this and other health and fitness topics at http://drparrsays.com or on Twitter @drparrsays.

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HEALTH & FITNESS: Tips to choosing healthy breakfast - Aiken Standard