hello everyone today i have anna on the show from english like a native welcome anna how are
you today hi i'm really well thank you thanks for having me i'm excited to have you on the
show today guys anna is an english teacher an entrepreneur and a creator she's the owner of
english like a native dot co dot uk and she has a youtube channel with more than eight hundred
thousand subscribers anna congratulations on your work so far you are definitely
a leader in this industry that's amazing oh fleshy thank you so much that's really kind of you to say
i don't really see it that way i'm just you know just doing my thing like like most of us are just
trying to trying to help people and yeah it's working all right i've been doing it for a long
time how long have you been doing it i think it's getting on for nine years now oh my gosh that's
yeah same for very similar for me so we've been out there creating content for a long time for our
listeners but today i'm excited for my listeners to have you on the show because guys we're going
to talk about a topic we all love which is food and of course we do and specifically breakfast
anna are you a breakfast person or not so much oh this is an interesting question because i've
always been a breakfast person i i always felt like i couldn't function until i had breakfast
but these days i'm trying to move away from having breakfast because i'm starting to do more
intermittent fasting which is wow quite popular at the moment but um for me it's it's about longevity
and better health and so actually i'm moving away from being a breakfast person which is really sad
oh my gosh that's interesting so have you found that that's creating results for you that you
you feel differently at the end of the day if you have your first meal later yeah so i do this kind
of um it's like a 14 10 ratio so i try to eat just for 10 hours and then i fast for 14 hours i don't
do it every day of the week i'll always have a few days off but what i try to do is eat before
six o'clock um and then i can't so of an evening so i i try to get my dinner in before six okay
and then if i can do that then it means i can have some breakfast at a reasonable time in the morning
but i have two young children and sometimes it's hard to get a meal in at the right time and so
if i have a normal evening meal at the normal time it will mean i have to skip breakfast all
together wow okay what that does for your body is it puts you into a different state it puts you
into like a repair mode your cells start to worry that there's no food coming and so they say well
rather than just keep reproducing cells let's stop doing that and repair what we have and clean
everything up and so it's supposed to make you healthier it's supposed to help you to live longer
and i certainly feel like i have more energy and i have like a clearer head less brain fog wow
interesting oh now i'm curious i feel like that would be really hard i tend to get kind of hangry
in the morning right so for our listeners guys the word hangry is a combination of hungry and angry
fun little word uh i struggle if i can't eat within the first hour of when i'm up but you let
me know about how that goes anna after a couple of months i'll be curious to see you know what
is the final result is it really you know sounds like it's working so far so that's great awesome
i love it so and i wanted to have you on today not just to talk about breakfast and food but kind of
how food and breakfast breakfast specifically has changed in the uk over the last 50 years where are
you from in the uk anna originally i'm from the north of england near manchester and liverpool
now i live down close to london so in the south of england okay okay excellent excellent and so
let's talk about this a little bit i mean i have some things to share with our listeners about how
american breakfast has changed but i'd like to hear from you first what was it like 50 years ago
or let's say yeah let's say 70 years ago in the mid 1900s right in the 50s and what is it like
today yeah so i wasn't around at that time right sure neither was i but i do know that you know we
were coming out of um out of the world wars that that happened in the early part of the century
and in the uk we still had rationing going on in the 50s so they were so rationing things like eggs
and meat and so breakfasts were quite plain really egg on toast was a staple as well as
cereals and always with an english breakfast something that's never changed is tea
a cup of tea is the is the first thing you start with oh my gosh yeah toast eggs maybe jam on toast
yes but nothing too nothing too lavish nothing too extravagant it wasn't the time people didn't
have the money right just after world war ii um we could do a whole other episode together anna on t
culture i would love to learn more about that the right way to hold your teacup i
mean all there must be so much etiquette in british culture around tea i would imagine
yeah i mean i've got cupboards full of tea and tea leaves and teapots and tea strainers
but you know a good old tea bag in a mug it goes it goes down pretty well it comes
out pretty well i love it i love it so a very basic kind of atmosphere and i'll just
throw out the american side of breakfast in the 1950s then and then we'll go to
current day for both cultures so guys in the u.s you know in the 1950s you know we had the famous
diner right i'm not sure when dying have you ever heard of a diner anna i'm sure you have i'm sure
you've traveled you've heard of it yeah we have stranger things no we have a lot of american um
culture tv here so you know diner is a very iconic american like cafe would be a cafe or a caf for us
exactly do you have any roller diners do the waitresses really wear roller skates i've seen
that yeah i've seen where we have more of a drive they call it i think they call it a drive-in where
you drive into a little kind of kiosk for your car and the waitress comes out outside and skates
around your car takes your order then skates back in and then skates out with your food so
yeah that is a thing that you find when you take a typical american road trip you would find that
out in the countryside but the diner was invented in i believe in the northeast in new jersey and
guys if you're if you've never been to a diner it is it looks like a traditional railway dining car
right that's kind of what it's traditionally been modeled after so i remember going to when i was
a kid to a little diner and thinking oh it looks like a train that's interesting so bad coffee bad
bottomless coffee greasy food right but also very basic anna similar to what you said which makes
total sense for that time period but now we can still go to diners any time of the day and enjoy
basic food you're not there for the quality of the food right yeah yeah yeah and you know i always
find that the if it's more unhealthy then it's cheaper so you're going to get you're going to
get well it's funny saying more for your money because actually the more you pay you tend to
get smaller portions and you know healthier food but you just have to think of it in the right way
that's true when you go to a very fancy restaurant at least in the us you often get a tiny portion
not sure whether it's always super healthy but we never know what those chefs kind of put in
there butter cream all these all these things but yeah so that is kind of where american breakfasts
were in the mid 1900s you know just basic food huge menus diners and now where are you at in
breakfast culture i know a lot of different people like a lot of different things and
anna you don't eat breakfast but what are people dining on for breakfast nowadays in the uk so over
over the decades there have been shifts towards different styles of breakfast so we went to the
continental breakfast like in the 1980s which was you know the the queso for breakfast and and and
cheese and ham with breakfast which we'd never really done before and then we moved to a more
american style of breakfast so we started having things like bagels and pancakes coming in waffles
things that we hadn't previously had and that was like 80s into 90s that we started having those
and and then a more healthy breakfast kicked in in the 2000s which was the granola
fruit um you know just being a little like paring it back a little bit because something i haven't
mentioned actually is the traditional english breakfast which is the full english breakfast
we have these cafs called a greasy spoon it's literally the the umbrella term
for these types of cafes where they sell a full english breakfast it's a greasy spoon
and it's i mean you can have a healthier version but generally it's unhealthy because it's just
bread dripping in fat and we have something called the black pudding you know okay no i don't know
that one it sounds really gross when i tell you what it is um it's a blood sausage basically so
it's a sausage which is made of congealed blood and oats and a bit of meat as well but it's it's
i'm i'm a vegetarian um wannabe i used to be a veggie and now i sometimes eat meat with my kids
so now this kind of thing really turns my stomach but i used to enjoy it when i was a meat eater
meat-eater interesting but yeah the black pudding is part of a full english breakfast and it's just
this huge mountain of food that people would eat and although you can still get a traditional
english breakfast in most places it's okay it's not like the staple breakfast that you'd have
or it maybe it's a sunday treat that people would put together in the home okay i mean the english
breakfast is a sunday treat yeah yeah so like on a sunday we call it a fry up for sure do you want
to fry up do you fancy a fry up because it would traditionally be a fried egg and then fried bacon
so i'm fried bread so there's a lot of fried stuff it sounds like have people moved
further away from the traditional english breakfast as you've introduced new things
like the the 90s style bagels and granola or are people kind of coming back to their roots
more would you say i think we're just i think we're taking a bit of everything
um so i think across the board now this variety that's been introduced people just kind of
you know take what they like on any given day when you go to the standard kind of food eatery places
in in central london um which is where it's all happening they've got their finger on the pulse
of food fashion they usually offer a little bit of everything they won't do a full breakfast but
they will offer bacon sandwiches for example but you'll have porridge porridge is another really
standard you know it's a budget food isn't it but we have porridge here quite a lot because
we know it's a really healthy food and i think at least in my circle of friends definitely moving
more towards a healthy option for breakfast is what everyone's trying to achieve
um yeah just being more conscious smoothies here's another one morning smoothie get your veggies in
yeah very very trendy smoothies are one thing that's really hot in the u.s right now that's
interesting is avocado toast you guys do this i'm sure you do in london absolutely yeah of course
right so but it's tricky it is kind of healthy avocados very healthy but sometimes you can see
a layer of butter just below the avocado and then i think oh maybe it's not quite as healthy
as i thought so avocado toast is pretty hot right now in the u.s yeah smashed avocado with a bit of
chili and pepper yes yeah you can do it a lot of different ways it's really interesting actually
i'd say in the u.s you know things have moved a lot especially in the major cities boston
new york even denver move towards brunch culture uh this is where you know you need a reservation
or you're standing in line and you get dressed up sometimes uh you know it's large groups of friends
often there's bloody marys uh you know mimosas so people are drinking in the morning yeah this is a
big scene now becoming more and more expensive food so you and i'm personally not a brunch
person i don't like to drink that early in the morning obviously and i don't like to feel so
full in the middle of the day because it's a sunday i want to be outside hiking
but people end up just going home and taking a nap because they've eaten so much and had
something to drink and yeah and it's hot out but this has become really really trendy so we've
moved towards more expensive foods kind of food being a scene so it's really been interesting to
see that change over the years in the u.s yeah i think food in general has always been an event in
some form yes hasn't it yes i know that throughout my life times when i've been single and alone
cooking for myself is almost an afterthought oh i'll just grab whatever i can i don't want to
cook for myself but if someone's coming around to see you or you're going out to meet with friends
like you make food a part of or the event that's the event and everyone gathers around that event
that's a good point anna so it's probably it's really probably more of a singles
scene type of deal you know the brunch is in the big city but it's been interesting to see
things go from pretty basic in the us to a much more elevated kind of food and kind of more of
an experience really this bunch happened during the week when people are like oh no no no no no
no this is this is mostly sundays saturdays weekends maybe holidays yeah yeah yeah
any final thoughts on breakfast and the evolution of breakfast anna um oh not that i can think of
um this is nothing happened sorry no
that's okay no this has been great guys it's always interesting to compare two cultures
especially when you hone in on one specific thing like breakfast like lunch or dinner so have this
conversation with other native speakers in your world open up the conversation like anna and
i have today so go for it guys all right anna can you tell our listeners where they can find
you online of course yes please come and check out my channel english like a native on youtube
and i also offer courses and services for english learners over on english like native dot co dot uk
awesome well thanks for coming on the show today it's been really fun chatting
thank you for having me i've had a great time thank you thanks anna take care bye