Everyone knows that the best breakfast for keeping you warm in this incredibly cold weather is a bowl of steaming hot porridge. Or at least that's what your mum used to tell you when you were little.
Porridge for breakfast is good for your heart. Photo: Flickr, avlxyz
But according to Aberdeen University researchers, there are other good reasons to have porridge in the morning. Wholegrain foods, they claim, help reduce your blood pressure - and apparently they work as well as widely used blood pressure lowering drugs.
By giving one group of volunteers three servings of wholegrain foods a day, while another group ate similar amounts of refined grains (for example white bread instead of wholemeal bread), they discovered a drop in blood pressure among the wholegrain group.
The drop in blood pressure is the equivalent of a 15 reduced risk of stroke, claim the Aberdeen experts.
The volunteers in the wholegrain group ate widely available foods, including porridge oats, oat flakes and oatcakes, as well as other wholegrain cereals such as Weetabix, Shreddies and Cheerios.
Of course it's not the first time experts have linked wholegrain foods with heart health benefits. But apparently the study carried out at Aberdeen University - and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition - is the first to test the idea that wholegrains are good for your heart in proper clinical trials.
Scottish food manufacturers are understandably overjoyed at the news, especially makers of porridge oats.
What's your favourite breakfast (and is it good for you)?