By SAM MCMANIS, Sacramento Bee

What say we channel our inner Wilfred Brimley and rhapsodize about oatmeal, which may be the best breakfast option out there? You remember breakfast, don't you? The most important meal of the day.

Claire Gliddon is usually a cheery sort -- downright perky, even. Get her talking about her charity work with Project Linus, which provides blankets to needy children, and she gets as excitable as a kid herself.

Yet the 52-year-old Fair Oaks, Calif., resident also has these moods, these bouts of sluggishness and ennui, that must be acknowledged and overcome.

Soon, the sun will be merely a rumor for long stretches during waking hours, and darkness will dominate our senses and moods.

As if that weren't depressing enough, here's another grim thought: You most likely will become significantly deficient in vitamin D.

Teen suicides have risen alarmingly. It doesn't have to be that way.

Yet the view persists that adolescents are somehow immune to the debilitating clinical depression that afflicts many adults. And such carefree-days-of-youth thinking on the part of some parents and caregivers can yield tragic results.

When it comes to the myriad risk factors for heart disease, few things top LDL cholesterol. A true bodily evildoer, this bad-boy lipid hogs all the media attention as a potential cardiac killer.

How closely have you been following the latest research on nutrition? Here's a true/false quiz to test yourself.

QUESTIONS

1. Vitamin B12 appears to protect people's brains as they age.

2. High-fructose corn syrup is the worst sweetener you can consume.

3. Soluble fiber lowers your risk of heart disease and stroke.

People who make a habit of running to work offered these tips on how to navigate the commute.

- If you don't have shower and locker facilities at work, there might be a nearby health club where you can shower and change - providing you are a member. If not, there's always this stopgap: the company's restroom sink.

Like so many groggy morning commuters, Debra Moss likes to begin her day at a Starbucks. Got to get that energy boost for the slog into work, after all.

On this early morning, with dawn slowly breaking, the 51-year-old who lives in Sacramento, Calif., decided she needed something stronger than Starbucks iced tea. So she ducked into the Safeway next door and downed a Red Bull.

Times are tough. We don't need Ben Bernanke to tell us that. So we're all looking for bargains, even when it extends to fitness classes.

Health clubs, of course, offer an array of options. But for the really cost-conscious, it might help to think outside the gym for a fitness class fix, be it yoga, ping-pong or lap swimming.

One way to make recreational athletes feel old is to ask them how, back in the day, they used to figure out the mileage they ran, biked or hiked.

If they mention pedometers or GPS devices, you know they are young 'uns.