The whole world is intrigued by our adoption of a big breakfast and a small lunch, which is the opposite of most cultures. Only Germans and Nordic cultures are also known to have a substantial breakfast. American’s and Germans are the fattest and sickest people, not because they eat too much fat, but because they eat a high carbohydrate high calorie-multi-meal diet that makes a sick couch potato culture. Asian cultures who labor in physical work typically rise early with hot warming broth soups of some meat fat, eggs and easy digesting rice noodles. This will get them through the coolest morning time to stop for lunch during the heat of the day. But ask any tourist and they will all tell you that they can’t believe what an obese culture we are. In their countries an obese person is rare and usually hides from socializing because they are stared at by everyone. Asians also get more hydrogen from their high fruit and vegetable diets and this is why they age slower than western cultures. Their bodies don’t store fat, not because they don’t eat enough fat, on the contrary they celebrate pork and duck fat, but because their diet and physical demanding life keeps them in a fasting type of fat mobilization state instead of fat storage state. This fat mobilization state is why people lose weight during fasting.

A Brief History of Breakfast

The first record of a daily morning meal comes from Ancient Egypt where Peasants would consume beer, bread, and onions in the morning before going to work all day and not eat again until the end of the day. During the Middle Ages breakfast was not commonly eaten as it was seen as gluttonous by the Catholic Church. Typically only the old, sick, children, and labouring men ate breakfast as they did not have the strength to make it to the typically large midday meal. The term breakfast originated in 15th century Europe but eating in the morning didn’t become a daily ritual in Europe until the 1600’s when when many people began going to factory or farm work each day. 

According to food historians, humans have been eating eggs for about 6 million years, originally eating them raw from the nests of wild birds. Jungle birds were domesticated for egg production in India by 3200 BC, and it is thought that Ancient Egypt and Ancient China were the first societies to domesticate hens.  Bacon can be dated back to 1500 BC, making it one of the oldest cuts of meat. The phrase ‘bringing home the bacon’ originated in 12th century England. If a married man could testify in front of God that he had not argued with his wife in a year he would be awarded a side of bacon. It was a great honor to ‘bring home the bacon’.

The American Breakfast

Historically breakfast in America was similar to European habits that were imported by immigrant culture. Especially in farming cultures where they were famous for doing the bulk of their work in a fasting state, of just some black coffee before heading out the door. Working in a fasting state led them to a large midday meal they called supper, which combined breakfast and lunch foods. Ask any farmer today why they do that and they will tell you that the habit was inherited with the farm for many generations. They say that if they eat anything, they just don’t last long enough to get the bulk of physical chores done before the heat of the day and become sluggish in the mind and body. If you look at them they are like the ever-ready-battery bunny running on a bit of adrenaline, caffeine and Autophagy energy. This is completely counter intuitive that energy comes from food. They lose their hunger and become like our ancestors in focused determination to not stop until the job is done. They stop only at midday not so much because they are hungry but to get out of the heat that is going to be a big energy drain that will leave them too weak to recuperate for after supper chores.

We’re all familiar with the iconic American breakfast duo of bacon and eggs! But when did bacon and eggs become the quintessential American breakfast?  Bacon and eggs as a morning staple is a relatively modern convention, only dating back to the 1920s. Cereal companies had been trying to teach Americans to eat more for breakfast because mechanized harvesting of wheat and oats was making cereal and bread more affordable to the masses.

As with so many American customs we adopted, Breakfast is simply the result of a compelling marketing scheme by the father of “propaganda” Edward Bernays. Bernays, was a public relations and marketing genius inspired by his uncle Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis work and he knew how psychologically fragile humans were to advertising campaigns that sold emotions instead of products. He is credited with the introduction of bacon and eggs into the American breakfast under contract by the pork producers who wanted to sell their bacon.

In order to increase bacon sales Bernays wrote to 5,000 physicians asking whether a heavy breakfast was better for health than a light breakfast and 4,500 physicians wrote back confirming that a heavy breakfast was better for health as the body is depleted of nutrients after a night of sleep. He had this ‘study’ published in newspapers across America, conveniently presenting bacon and eggs as the ideal choice. Strategic advertising using slogans that “Breakfast Is The Most Important Meal Of The Day” according to doctors, Bernays was successful in changing American breakfast habits to first generation immigrants who wanted to create their own unique culture. We became the Norman Rockwell images that sold us happy lifestyles. Today advertising surrounds us on Tel-A-Vision programs and subliminal messages that shape our political opinions, identity and beliefs, -never more evident than selling us a fake pandemic “brought to you by Pfizer”. Bernays was so good at marketing propaganda that the Nazi’s adopted his method to forge a German nationalism on the march to world war victory like lemmings jumping into the sea.

So a big breakfast has not been widely adopted outside the US as either necessary or practical to get our morning energy. It is certainly not the most important meal of the day according to ancestral history. Ultimately everyone should eat according to their lifestyle (certainly not their “blood type”) and be sensitive to how their diet regulates their energy levels throughout the day and not just the morning. Some work schedules don’t accommodate the biggest meal at midday and that has to be adjusted to practical routines.

So let’s be guided by either common sense or nature by example to guide us because we are no longer a hunting and gathering culture. Yes some axioms are true that we are what we eat and our energy comes from fasting instead of food. Food gives us the nutrition to replace 75% of our cells every year at the rate of about 600 billion a day, but we are energetic beings with electric bodies who live in an electric universe. Food can interrupt and reek havoc in our electrical body and not only steal our energy but more importantly unbalance our cellular health.

We will continue to explore more opinions and practices that optimize our Autophagy energy to get our morning chores or exercise done. Join the conversation and hit the like button at the top.