Why is it that you rarely see broccoli, or other vegetables, at breakfast? I’ve seen people eat salads for lunch or for dinner, never at breakfast. Exceptions are rare: sometimes you’ll see a quiche or an omelette with a few chopped veggies in it. But we have fruit, nuts, cheese, pretty much anything except vegetables. Is this just an American thing?
Why do our breakfasts consist so heavily of carbohydrates, sugar, fat, and protein, while veggies are pushed away to lunch and dinner? Is there a biological reason for not wanting veggies right after you wake up?
American style breakfasts are derived from English and Irish breakfasts. They are heavy on meat, eggs, sugar and grains. However, that is not universal. Most cultures don’t have unique breakfast foods. It is the same food that you eat any other time of the day and often just leftovers. There is no reason for it other than cultural traditions. Some people, including me, do eat vegetables for breakfast. I have to dispute the premise a little too. Hashbrowns are a traditional American breakfast food and they are made from potatoes. Fruits are popular as are things like V-8 juice.
Are you only including things like fresh leafy vegetables?
Fruit, nuts and cereal were vegetables last time I checked.
That aside, you’ve been asleep for hours, and wake up on an empty stomache. To break your fast you want something you can eat straight away, and get the energy from it immediately. You don’t want to be bothered boiling some potatoes, and then having to wait as they slowly digest.
And yet potatoes are a common component in American breakfasts. We boil water for coffee, we boil oats, we boil eggs. Not seeing a huge impediment here, especially since potatoes can be left-overs (e.g., potato cakes from mashed potatoes).
In Japan, a common breakfast will have some rice and some pickled vegetables. Also some seaweed and fish. One favorite dish is to take a small bowl of rice and crack an egg into it, letting the heat of the rice cook the egg.
It would depend on the vegetables for me. Some would guarantee socially untoward gaseous emissions by midday, and I suspect my wages would fall accordingly.
All in all, though, I’ve never seen that humans have been all that guided by science, when it comes to customs. And the idea that certain foods are that much better for a person being widespread, is a very recent phenomenon, which is still fairly controversial.
My guess, would be that it’s cultural, and that each cultural decision is based on the history of the locally common foodstuffs.
Peter Morris, fruits, nuts, and cereals are–by definition–NOT vegetables. The “vegetable” part of a plant excludes the reproductive and seed parts. Leaves, stems, roots–those are vegetables.
Could we please avoid an argument about what constitutes a “vegetable”? I specifically mentioned broccoli and salads as examples. I’ll admit that I hadn’t thought about potatoes. As for beans, why is it always baked beans and never green beans?
The point is, there is an entire category of foods which you commonly see at lunch and dinner but never (or almost never) see at breakfast. I doubt that anyone here disputes that this category exists. Let’s not get hung up on whether the word “vegetables” accurately describes the category. So why does this category exist? Is it purely cultural or is there a biological reason for it?
I have NEVER seen anyone eat a salad for breakfast. Ditto for broccoli, green beans, cauliflower, carrots, corn on the cob, or cucumber. I have RARELY seen anyone eat zucchini for breakfast, but on those few occasions I’ve seen it, the zucchini was always always always in an omelette or a quiche. I have COMMONLY seen grits or hash browns at breakfast, but NEVER corn on the cob or mashed potatoes or baked potatoes.
If I see someone eating waffles or an omlette for dinner, I think “gee, that’s fun”. But if I saw someone eating a baked potato and a Caesar salad for breakfast, I’d suspect this person was mentally ill. Imagine a person walks into McDonald’s at 9:30 am and orders an Egg McMuffin and then asks for lettuce and pickles on it. To me, that sounds insane. Why? What’s so crazy about putting lettuce onto a sandwich at 9:30 am when I wouldn’t blink twice about putting lettuce and pickles onto a sandwich at 11:30 am?
I’m inclined to think that, after sleeping, you want to kickstart your metabolism with food that digests quickly. But that’s just a WAG on my part. What’s the straight dope?
