Guinness Record Healthy Breakfast day to promote healthy eating

Breakfast plays an important part in improving overall nutritional status, and improving feeling of health and wellbeing.¹ The nutritional, educational, and economic value of having breakfast is increasingly evident. A territory-wide Healthy Breakfast Programme with participation of 91 519 people in 144 venues was launched by the Centre for Health Education and Health Promotion of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2002 to promote regular healthy breakfast eating.² The unique feature is the involvement of celebrities such as pop stars, media, politicians, senior academic so it can facilitate community participation and promote participant and community empowerment. The programme used the community organisation model, which is a planned process to activate a community using its own social structures and any available resources to accomplish goals consistent with local values.³ This event was the largest healthy breakfast programme breaking the Guinness Record.

Top: celebrities including pop stars, public figures, sports stars, senior academics had breakfast simultaneously with 91 519 participants in 144 different venues. Bottom left: students representing different schools at the university campus. Middle: students eating their healthy breakfast at their school. Bottom right: staff and witnesses ate the healthy breakfast together at school.