Why do most people typically eat the same kinds of foods for breakfast only? I know that it’s popular to eat breakfast after a night out partying, but that’s the exception.
Obviously eggs, bacon, biscuits, etc. are served at other times, but it seems that alot of these foods are reserved for breakfast only (culturally speaking).
Why is this?
I think “breakfast” foods, like cereal, waffles, scrambled eggs, muffins and whatnot, are usually sweeter and lighter than most of the rest of our daily food. When you wake up in the morning, are you going to want steak and shrimp?
That doesn’t explain bacon and sausages. Also, a Japanese breakfast usually includes salted fish, and doesn’t include anything sweet. The English also eat smoked fish (kipper) for breakfast.
It seems to me the only generalization you can make is that breakfast foods are simple and quick to prepare. Even fresh donuts and muffins are quicker to make than regular bread.
I like a more german style of breakfast, hard boiled egg, small cured sausages[ today was actually a couple small slices sweet opresata sausage], some cheese, a few kalamata olives, some lowcarb friendly fruit [today was fresh strawberries] and wasa crispbread with lowcarb friendly jam and cream cheese. Coffee, and my ritual glass of [unsweetened and self-sweetened with splenda] grapefruit juice
I have the occasional kipper for breakfast.
And what of all those people (like myself even) who eat steak and eggs for breakfast?
Well I do it rarely but I have been known to.
I always wonder why people don’t eat pancakes or waffles and such for supper. They make a wonderful quick meal.
My longstanding theory of breakfast foods hearkens back to centuries past.
Even in the early 20th century, few Americans, for example, didn’t have anything akin to our stoves. They would’ve had a hearth or maybe a Franklin stove, which might have been banked in the winter, but would have been uncomfortable and wasteful to run overnight for most of the year. Cooking had to be minimal.
Breakfast traditions in the US probably owe more to rural traditions than urban (the majority of the US propulation was rural until the middle of the 20th century). Breakfast occupies a different place in the farmer’s life than for urbanites. Farmers were often up before dawn, and only ate breakfast after a few hours of morning: the cows were milked, eggs gathered, and the animals were fed before the farmer was. Even lunch in many countries is still traditionally a ‘cold meal’ like the “ploughman’s lunch” eaten by farmers in the field, workers in factories, etc.
Many “traditional breakfast foods,” may be traditional, but weren’t eaten hot (as we like to imagine today -but how many of us don’t bother heating our poptarts or danishes as we rush out the door?) A fire was not lit every day, and for much of the year, the cooking fire might have been outside. Food for all meals was often cooked for days in advance (e.g. breads, stews, roasts, etc.).
eggs: fresh or unrefrigerated in a waterglass (sodium silicate) solution, were considered bacterially sterile self-storing foods until a few cases of chicken ovaray salmonella were seen in the 1980s. Most are still safe - especially since cold hard boiled eggs were the most common breakfast form in he past
bacon: sugar-, salt-, smoke- and dry curing were preservative methods. Bacon can also be cooked in advance
ham: like above, but eaten raw more often than bacon
sausage: a preservation method. Today’s breakfast sausages are raw, but the old types were precooked or preserved, like deli meats or cold cuts
oatmeal, porridge, grits, etc.: often eaten hot today, but more often prepared in advance and eaten cold in the past
pancakes, griddlecakes, etc.: flour or meal, water, maybe eggs, cooked quickly; also suitable for eating cold
cereals: (muesli, granola, toasted grains) prepared in advance
fruit: I’m not going to explain this; too many puns
milk: ditoo - really really horrendous jokes being repressed here
orange juice: NOT traditional:a deliberately orchestrated campaign by Florida orange growers after WWII. Impractical without trucking/refrigeration
pizza and chinese take out: What? That’s what I prefer!
biscuits, bread, etc.: the last routine baker of fresh biscuits for breakfast, a Ms. Martha Stewart, was recently jailed for fraud, ending the practice. Seriously, these were always typically prepared in advance.
You get the idea. We now eat (or imagine that others eat) foods descended from the traditional breakfast foods of yore, but not served the same way. The “hot breakfast” was probably never the rule, even in the brief era between the modernization of the kitchen, and the two-income family.
Probably not the general rule even today. It’s not the “Leave it to Beaver” age. “Hot” to me, for example only, is oat meal. But that’s not the “traditional” breakfast, but probably typical along with cereal (me, too), or toaster pastries (“Pop Tarts”).
I’d always assumed the typical American breakfast was the farmers’ breakfast; it’s typical in the western world in general. Even the “continental breakfast” isn’t strictly European; more typical is an American-style eggs/meat/potato breakfast.
Looove “breakfast” foods at any meal. An omelette for lunch is not that unusual. Lots of diners serve breakfast all day.
When I was a child, on occasion we would have pancakes for supper. And they were made from scratch; no mixes. I loved that – it was such a wonderful treat – but I noticed my mom was not very happy on those days. It didn’t occur to me until a couple decades later that those were probably the days when there was too much week left at the end of Dad’s paycheck and that was all she had to give us.
A lot of the things we think of as breakfast foods are good and filling, not light and fluffy. Solid salty meats. Eggs. Hearty oatmeal. Enough to last you through the day.
I hate big filling breakfasts because I ‘run’ better on an empty stomach, not a full one. May have something to do with the fact that I’m not a very big person.
When we visited Munich and Linz in 1980 breakfast consisted of cold cuts, which my wife loved. She eats soup, pizza or fried rice for breakfast, all sorts of weird stuff.
Steak for breakfast is not weird at all. When I helped set up a competition for the Boy Scouts when I was a teenager the volunteers traditionally got a steak and eggs breakfast. Didn’t the astronauts get one before the launch.
As for late breakfasts, we sometimes eat pancakes for dinner. When I was in college there was a place called Mondo’s in Boston, where the Quincy Market mall is now, which served breakfast all night long for $1.99. It was meant for the truckers bringing in produce, but it was usually jammed at 2 am with college students who had a case of the munchies for some strange reason.
The typical breakfast of milk and cereal is eaten because it takes little preparation. If you have just woken and are hungry then something quick to prepare is the obvious solution. Also cereal breakfasts provide the energy you need to operate.
Cereals are not eaten at any other time because I expect most people find them too boring to eat more than once a day and would like to eat other food groups than carb’s.
antechinus, I take it you haven’t met many growing American teenaged boys who eat cereal from a mixing bowl. For a snack.
Meet Peter Fox.
This makes a lot of sense, but what about all the sugary foods that kids seem to only want at breakfast? Cereal and pop tarts are fairly light but admittedly have a ton of energy in sugar form.
Kids want sugary foods all the time. In fact, so do I. :o
These are actually not the best things to eat at breakfast, since the carbs, especially the sugar, will be gone in a few hours. Ideally, we’d eat a substantial protein-rich breakfast that will stay with us and keep us going all day.
The now-common cornflake-type stuff is a relatively recent invention.
The History of Breakfast Cereals
