(bubbles popping)
(screen whooshing)
- I (beeping) hate American breakfast.
- [Child] Right away, I need a good breakfast.
- [Man] Right away, a big bite of toast.
- [Man] For kids, we like a square meal for breakfast.
- [Man] A wonderful new fruit in the box cereal
(bell ringing)
(upbeat music)
- I mean, how did we get here?
How did this (fluid moving)
become breakfast in my country?
And what is breakfast even all about?
Some people say it's the most important meal of the day,
and others say that it's totally worthless,
and you don't even need to eat breakfast
if you don't want to.
- [Man] Two pancakes with hot syrup and butter.
- I bet a lot of you watching don't eat breakfast
in the morning,
and you knew who else doesn't eat breakfast in the morning?
This guy.
- [Interviewer] what do you eat for breakfast?
- Nothing.
- I grew up thinking that breakfast had to be a certain way,
(funky music)
but then in my twenties,
I started traveling and I learned that in fact,
this version of breakfast is a very narrow,
very American version of breakfast.
Once I discovered (pan sizzling)
non-American breakfast, (liquid pouring)
I feel like my eyes were opened
to a completely different approach
to the first meal of the day.
I want to show you some of those breakfasts,
but first, let's talk about breakfast
and how American breakfast got this way.
- [Man] for about 22 cents,
You get as much nutrition as this bacon and egg breakfast
when there's no time for your regular breakfast.
- Okay, before I jump into all of my opinions
about breakfast,
let's talk about science for a minute, like facts.
(mouse clicking)
does breakfast matter?
Is it actually the most important meal of the day
like I was told my whole life?
- [Man] You can't be your best
if you don't eat a good breakfast.
- Turns out there's data on this, lots of studies,
but you don't need to read them all.
In fact, don't read them all.
Let me give you the 20-second version.
It turns out the methods in a lot of these studies
are really crummy.
They weren't randomized controlled trials,
like the gold standard for good science,
and in a lot of cases,
they didn't really study anything useful.
They kind of hyper focus on breakfast
as it pertains to weight.
And in most of these studies,
they don't even focus on what the person
is eating for breakfast,
they only focus on whether they do or do not eat breakfast,
regardless of what they're actually eating.
And to add to all of this,
a lot of these studies are funded
by corporations who have a vested interest
in making breakfast seem necessary and healthy.
So yeah, there's a lot of science on this,
but the science does not come to any useful conclusions,
and is often times just poorly conducted.
(screen snapping) What this means
is that there's no real evidence
that breakfast is the most important meal of the day,
and there's nothing special or magic about breakfast.
That's more of a marketing myth than anything else.
- [Man] Had any really good days lately?
Like when the sun shines brighter,
and people seem friendlier,
and work goes faster, things like that?
The really good days start out good
with new Carnation Instant Breakfast.
- Okay, wait, but there is a little caveat in this.
If you're an eight year old kid or a teenager,
and you're in school,
there actually is some useful evidence
that says that eating breakfast in the morning
is good for your learning and brain development.
So that's the caveat.
There actually is evidence there.
For the rest of us though,
if you like breakfast in the morning,
eat breakfast in the morning.
If you're not into that, don't do it.
Okay, that's it.
Unless you're a kid,
but I don't know how many kids are watching.
Okay, so that's the science on this.
Turns out that I was a person for many years
who thought that I didn't like breakfast,
that I didn't need to eat breakfast.
Growing up in a small town in Oregon,
I didn't have a ton of exposure
to other cultures and other things,
and so my version of breakfast was this.
- [Man] There's a bowl of Corn flakes spooned from the dish.
- [Man] And there was some bacon.
- This is all I knew as breakfast food.
When we would eat eggs and bacon for dinner,
we were having breakfast for dinner.
This food was inseparable from the institution of breakfast.
If you're not from the United States,
let me just break down what American breakfast is
and its story, where it came from.
I'll split it out into two main categories
of breakfast in United States.
One, I called diner breakfast.
It kind of looks like this,
(groovy music)
and the other, I will call cereal,
which is everything from Pop Tarts to Froot Loops.
- Where are the Froot Loops?
- I didn't bring any, help!
- To granola bars, to Carnation Instant Breakfast.
It's like the quick stuff that's in our pantries
that we can just consume before work.
First, let's talk about diner breakfast.
There's no better reference for what diner breakfast is
in the United States than the official menu of IHOP,
which is so inappropriately named
as the International House of Pancakes.
- Welcome to the International House of Pancakes.
- At IHOP, this American institution,
you can start your day with this,
the Stuffed French Toast,
which effectively looks like my birthday cake.
Or you can get really cultured and hop over to Italy
for some Nutella crepes.
Or how about the Belgian Waffle Combo,
which isn't just a waffle,
but also comes with bacon and eggs?
Perhaps you're feeling savory,
so how about this breakfast sampler,
where you can eat a pig in three different ways,
because who just wants to eat bacon
when you could have all three?
All of this accompanied by French fries.
I mean, sorry, hash browns,
but why settle for these meager options
when you could go with the Cinn-A-Stack Pancakes,
which come layered with a luscious cinnamon roll filling
and drizzled with rich cream cheese icing,
and topped with, you guessed it, whipped cream.
icing for breakfast.
Now, here's the thing.
This diner style American breakfast is inspired by Europe.
(bright music)
American pancakes look a lot like other sweet,
flat unleavened breads that are eaten all over the world
and especially in Europe,
we just deemed necessary to fry it in butter
and then put more butter on top,
and then drizzle literal liquid sugar
over top and eat it for breakfast.
That was the only modification we made
to this wonderful tradition of European pancakes.
The idea of eating pork-based cured meats in the morning
is also a European tradition.
It comes from the traditional English breakfast,
which is delicious.
We just decided to get rid of some elements from that,
like the beans, (buzzer buzzing)
and the tomatoes, and the mushrooms.
Who needs those, anyway?
- Where are the Froot Loops?
- The American waffle comes from the beautiful,
delicious tradition of the Belgian or liege waffles,
which are served in desert stores as desserts in Belgium.
They're delicious.
The modification we made was to eat them for breakfast,
and then decide to take out the best part,
which is the Pearl sugar, (buzzer buzzing)
the crystallized sugar that makes a Belgian waffle
or liege waffle delicious.
To summarize, this diner style took European traditions,
turned them into breakfast and modified them
by making them lower quality, bigger portions,
and usually slathering them with cream and maple syrup.
- [Man] All you can eat pancakes,
this calls for all you can eat silverware.
get IHOP's All You Can Eat Pancakes free
when you buy any breakfast combo.
- I mean, icing for breakfast?
It just doesn't sound good.
Okay, so that's the diner version of American breakfast,
a big, important category of what Americans
like to eat for breakfast.
The other category looks like this.
(groovy music)
This is the stuff that's in our pantries.
This is the stuff we eat before we go to work.
It's quick, it's what I grew up eating as a child,
let's call this the cereal category.
This food came into our lives and became widespread
because of one main force: industrialization.
- [Man] The factory whistle awakened people in the mornings
and measured off their long days of toil.
- With the birth of factories and the standardized workday,
suddenly you had demand for a consistent,
quick, convenient food in the morning
to fuel you for the day.
Paired with that, you also now had technology
to mass produce products that would fit this demand.
Perhaps the best symbol of this shift towards mass produced,
easy, convenient breakfast food is Corn Flakes?
- [Man] Kellogg's Corn Flakes.
- The Kellogg's corporation, which made Corn Flakes
was a pioneer in making this breakfast food popular.
Not only because they were able to mass produce it
and cheaply sell it,
but also because they marketed it in this way
that made it feel like the most important thing
in the world.
♪ Kellogg's adds extra vitamins ♪
♪ To make their Corn Flakes the best it's ever been! ♪
(record scratching) But there was a problem.
Over time, people would look at this lousy bowl
of Corn Flakes and be like, who wants to eat this?
This is boring.
But America had a solution.
All we needed to do was pump it full of sugar.
- [Man] One big gulp of it.
- Yum!
- Gives me lots of energy--
- [Man] for this nutritious breakfast.
(icing bursting) - [Man] This is how
Pop Tarts have-- - Whoa!
- Geez.
I mean, that's, that's pretty aggressive right there.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's how I feel after I eat a Pop Tart as well.
Anyway, people started to believe
that breakfast and especially these commodities,
which were quickly becoming dessert disguised as breakfast.
- The ultimate fruit flavor.
- Look!
- Were the key to a healthy morning
and a good start to the day.
And soon, I was born into a world,
a world where breakfast products and norms
were cemented before me.
A world where millions of Americans
would wake up in the morning and consume dessert
disguised as breakfast.
Your muffin is just a cupcake in disguise.
That cup of yogurt might as well be a scoop of ice cream.
And then there's the mighty doughnut,
the food that doesn't even pretend to be breakfast.
It's just literal dessert,
and it's shamelessly just like, hey, I'm dessert.
Do you want to eat me for breakfast?
And a lot of people are like, yeah.
I mean, I kind of respect that.
I'm kind of like, if you're gonna be dessert,
just represent yourself.
I respect the donut.
But wait, let me make one thing clear.
My issues with this have nothing to do with nutrition,
even sugar or calories or any of that.
I actually have a big issue with our obsession
with categorizing food by its numbers
and its constituent parts.
Not into that, I don't really care.
My problem here is that I don't like this food.
I just genuinely do not want to wake up
and consume dessert for breakfast.
If you do like this stuff for breakfast, that's awesome.
I've no issues with you and I'm not going
to try to convince you to change that.
- Cereal pancakes.
- Yum.
- [Boy] Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charms
and Cap'n Crunch.
- Okay, so a little bit of time has passed,
and a few things changed.
Number one, I got a haircut,
but number two, I think I'm cracking the code
on how to change my breakfast experience.
I spent the past few months thinking a lot
about breakfast and I've started to introduce
different breakfast cultures into my morning routine
that have really changed my world.
(percussive music)
I'm not gonna share all this with you now
because this video would be 30 minutes long,
but I have been filming all of this,
and it has been a really interesting journey
to invite different breakfast cultures into my world.
If enough people are interested
and you leave comments somewhere,
I will share it and make a video
about what breakfast looks like for me these days.
Spoiler alert, there's no icing.
I still have my occasional bowl of Lucky Charms,
which is a delicious cereal,
and the occasional pancake with my kids.
That's great stuff.
I mean, I'm not above that food.
It's just not what I want to eat every morning.
So anyway, I'll share that if you're interested.
Lastly, I wanna tell you about today's sponsor,
which is Skillshare,
which a place where I have learned a lot of my video skills,
but they also have cooking tutorials, I discovered.
They have a course on there about how to make
the perfect grilled cheese sandwich,
which by the way, is an amazing breakfast.
And it's one of thousands that Skillshare has
of all different types of topics,
whether it is animation and video,
which is all the courses I've taken,
or entrepreneurship, business,
photography design, basically everything.
Skillshare is incredibly cheap.
And for you, it could be completely free for two months.
You could have access to all of these tutorials for free
if you go to the link in my description,
click that link, it helps support this channel,
but more importantly, it kicks off your journey
of learning something new for free for two months.
That's like two months.
That's like 60 days of zero money playing around
with this really awesome resource on the internet.
And then after that, it's less than 10 bucks a month
if you do the annual subscription,
which is just ridiculously cheap for what you're getting.
Thank you Skillshare for supporting this channel
and letting me make these videos.
And thank you all for watching.
I will see you in the next one.
- [Man] Two eggs, four slices of bacon or sausage links,
hash browns, toast--
- [Woman] Juice, too!
- [Man] And juice, just $1.99.
- Served any time of day!