Breakfast!
It can range from gourmet to buffet, but most of us wake up with cereal at the beginning
of our day.
But how did get this way.
From a cheese tray to Special K. Why is breakfast the most important meal of the day.
(Low Voice)Why am I rhyming this?
Humans have never really decided whether or not they want to commit to breakfast.
We’ve had an on again off again relationship for the last few thousand years.
In Old English the first meal of the day was called disner, -- which is where we get dinner
from.
Disner, came from the Old French “disner”(Bad French Accent), which came from “desjunare”
meaning "to break one's fast" You can still see this word in Modern French with Déjeuner
and Spanish with Desayuno.
It wasn’t until the 15th century that the word breakfast came into use, meaning literally
to break the fast of the prior night.
In Ancient Egypt, peasants ate a maximum of two meals a day.
Breakfast and a late afternoon dinner.
Breakfast would consist of beer, bread, onions, garlic, and maybe some fruit.
This was to fill them up for a long day of labour building spaceship landing pads.
In Ancient Rome, breakfast was mostly of frowned upon.
According to food historian Caroline Yeldham, The Romans didn’t really like breakfast
and preferred to eat once a day around noon.
During the Middle-Ages in Europe, breakfast was not considered an important meal.
Two meals were eaten per day, one at mid-day, and one in the evening.
Eating a meal in the early morning was downright sinful.
Breakfast was reserved for the growing, the ill and the dying.
Along with manual labourers.
Eating breakfast was seen as something for the weak, or people so poor that they really
needed the energy, in order to do their low-status morning labour.
People were often ashamed of eating breakfast, and it was a quick, silent affair.
It usually consisted of a piece of bread, and a bit of cheese.
With some beer of course.
After the colonization of the Americas, and the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries,
breakfast amongst the noble classes -- started becoming popular.
The introduction of caffeinated beverages and chocolate (which was usually drank back
then) is what most likely spurred this new trend.
Because even our ancestors needed a morning caffeine boost.
With the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century people started working set hours in
factories.
More and more people from all classes started eating a morning meal before heading off to
work.
Breakfasts started getting heavier and heavier.
With the inclusion of sausages, bacon, eggs, beans, bread, potatoes, and more.
An epidemic started spreading across the breakfast eating world.
Dyspepsia, or indigestion.
And much like our modern obesity issue, it dominated the media.
It was in response to this pain, that solutions started being developed in the United States.
Europe did not bother trying to cure the problem, as they had already accepted the fact that
life is pain.
It began in the health sanitariums that were popular in the US, during the 1800s.
These sanitariums were similar to modern health spas and featured lots of baths and pseudo
sciencey type practices.
They were run by the likes of Sylvestar Graham and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.
Graham was a dietary reformer who tried to push his moralists beliefs through food.
He believed meat and spices had negative effects on people’s morals and developed his bland
Grahim Crackers to combat this.
The uninterestingly named James Jackson invented wheat “granula” at his sanitarium in 1863.
It is considered the first ready to eat breakfast cereal.
Kellogg copied him and invented his own “granula” which he swiftly renamed “granola” after
being sued.
Now these were not the tasty sugar coated cornflakes we know today, Jackson’s granula
was soaked in milk overnight just to make it edible, and was called “wheat rocks”
by critics.
But somehow within the first year that the product was available it sold more than 50
tons(45359.2kg).
Americans loved cereal because it didn’t have to be cooked.
It served as one of the first convenience foods, right when people’s time was being
monopolised by factory work.
Kellogg believed that it was the high amount of meat in the American diet, that caused
sexual desire and he wanted to cure masturbation through the use of bland whole grains.
“Highly seasoned meats, stimulating sauces... and dainty tidbits in endless variety,”
irritate the nerves and… react upon the sexual organs.”
He also recommended circumcision and tying children’s hands with rope to prevent sexual
urges.
Because he was a fun guy.
Marketers began to take interest in the new cereal industry.
Marketers that included Kellogg’s own brother and C.W. Post, a previous patient of Dr. Kellogg.
Will Keith Kellogg and C.W. Post started their own cereal companies, the Kellogg company
and Post Cereals.
Both of them became wildly successful thanks to two key ingredients: sugar and advertising.
Originally The Kellogg brothers couldn’t agree whether or not to add sugar.
Post Cereals had seen wild success after adding sugar to their products.
But Dr. Kellogg believed sugar was evil while his brother thought it was necessary to improve
the flavour of their “horse-food”.
Eventually sugar (and therefore Satan) won.
Cereal still assured everybody that it was a health food.
C.W Post continued to claim that his cereal could cure everything from loose teeth to
malaria.
Cereal companies soon realised that children were a great target market.
They pioneered the use of cartoon mascots in the 1930s, and this combination of marketing
and childhood sugar addiction create a generation of cereal lovers.
The cereal industry knew that establishing a brand was paramount.
Whether true dodgy health claims or cartoon characters, all that mattered was that people
associate your cereal with their morning.
“The sunshine that makes a business plant grow, is advertizing.” said C.W. Post who
would now be worth $800 million.
In 1944 Grape Nuts (haha...grape nuts) launched a campaign that involved spreading pamphlets about the benefits
of eating a good breakfast and they had nutritionists repeatedly state on the radio that “Breakfast
was the most important meal of the day”
Today breakfast is one of the most competitive markets.
Advertising spending is so high that when you buy cereal about a quarter of your money
is going to be used to persuade you to buy more cereal.
Because of this sales of cereal worldwide equate to nearly 28 billion dollars.
And 370 million kilograms of sugar is used every year to make cereal.
The breakfast industry is so competitive because they know that once you chose their brand.
That is what you will eat.
Every morning.
For years.
Breakfast is pretty much the only set meal of the day.
Dinner and Lunch change.
But you wake up to Cheerios every morning.
The advertising industry managed to convince people to stop consuming their traditional
breakfasts and to instead eating incredibly unnutritious sugary processed grains.
Today, the Irish are the world’s top cereal consumers, eating about 8.4kg per person a
year.
Compared to the UK at 6.7kg and the US at 4.5kg.
And that's how breakfast became the most important meal of the day.
The cornflakes or cocopuffs you ate this morning while originally designed to solve your indigestion
and chronic masturbation problem are now titans of the advertising industry and examples of
how easy it is to create a cultural tradition.