Bacon , egg , goner : If you grow up in North America or Europe , you ’re probably project breakfast . But when you think about it , anything alimentary and fill up is enough to get you going in the dawn . So why do n’t Westerners associate things like Pisces and rice or a bowl of beans with breakfast ? And why do they have a class of food just for that first meal of the day ?
The story of what Americans consider asbreakfast foodtraces its roots back hundreds of old age . " There are a server of influences that have shaped the concept of breakfast , from older Christian beliefs , socio - political economy , trade , technology , aesculapian hypothesis and construct of nourishment , convenience and marketing , to name a few , " say Dr. Beth Forrest , a prof of bountiful nontextual matter and applied food studies at theCulinary Institute of Americain Hyde Park , New York .
Breakfast foods like eggs , sausages and a version of hot cake were distinctive in Ancient Rome , though few the great unwashed at the timeate early in the morning time . And creating a category of food we think of as breakfast menu is a complicated narration .
What Is Breakfast?
First , just the word has historically meant unlike things . " Depending on the voice communication , ' breakfast ' ( or soften fast ) was seen as the first repast of the day , important tied to concept of fast before taking the Eucharist , but it does n’t appear in written form until 15th century in English , " Forrest tell via electronic mail . " But , this same repast can translate to ' small lunch ' in French , or even ' light supper ' in Italian . "
In some ways , what we associate with breakfast is what multitude wake up to C of eld ago . And of course , it ’s also changed importantly . " Pisces the Fishes , beer and wine could be found on the table going back to the medieval period , in add-on to solid food that we see today — eggs , bacon , bread and cheese , " Forrest says . " Conversely , porridge ( oatmeal and other grains ) would be consumed across meals , and not regulated to only the breakfast repast . "
But , she explains , thing changed during theIndustrial Revolution , as people began to have less time to devote to meals . " Breakfast is often needfully fast and the food that are served for breakfast motivation to be able-bodied to be prepared quickly . "
Time is just one of the factors that ’s determine what Americans know as breakfast . The rest of the story of can be distinguish through the foods .
Bacon (and Eggs) Was a PR Stunt
We ’ll be the first to accommodate that bacon is amazing , but it was n’t always a staple fiber of breakfast . So how did it become an essential of the morning meal?Public relations . The storey goes like this : In the 1920s Beech - Nut Packing Company wanted to get more people to eat bacon . Beech - Nut was a producer of lots of foods at the time , including chewing glue , peanut butter and , you guessed it , ham . The company rent Commonwealth of Puerto Rico consultant Edward Bernays who just happened to be the nephew ofSigmund Freud . They found that most Americans ate light breakfasts , so Beech - Nut ’s raw political campaign suggest a fleshy breakfast would be healthier " because the body loses energy during the night and need it during the day . " That message was spread in newspapers around the country , and would n’t you live , sales of bacon begin to skyrocket , and soon eggs and bacon were married forever .
Bagels Emigrated From Poland
In some parts of the country , nothing scream breakfast like a beigel with a schmear . And the bagel is a great example of how immigration changed our morning meals . More than 2.5 million Judaic multitude come to the United States between 1880 and 1920 , flee furiousness , riots and persecution in search of a place to build young lives . Many of them were Poles who opened little bakery and made their goodness by hand , let in bagel . By 1910 , New York City had established itself as the house of the American beigel industry , and even formed abagel union in 1915 ( Bagel Bakers Local # 338 ) .
But it was n’t until the ' 50s and ' 60s that bagels becameavailable prepackedand for sales event in foodstuff stores , thanks to Murray Lender ( Lender ’s Bagels ) . And we can thank Family Circle magazine for circularize the creed ofcream high mallow , liquid oxygen and bagels(and suburban woman of the house for the ingenious approximation ) .
Cold Cereal Was a Fluke
dusty food grain has a rather foreign history . It got its start as a health food served to patients in sanitoriums ( facilities where patients needed a tenacious stay for treatment ) . Dr. John Kellogg(yes , that Kellogg ) , ran a sanitorium in Battle Creek , Michigan , and made a type of granola ( nothing like the granola jazz today ) out of pale yellow , Indian meal and oats .
Grains were consider a good redress for continuing digestion problem that affected role build up after following the high - protein diets that were popular at the remnant of the 19th century . Kellogg ’s granola was so popular , he was sell 2 tons ( 1.8 metric tons ) a week by 1889 .
Because oat groat had to be soak and then manipulate , Kellogg needed to develop something debauched and easy to serve . His crony , W.K. , help him experiment with granola , and they developed a process to produce crispy wheat scrap — the first flaky breakfast food grain . Four years later on they were selling toastedcorn flake , and cold food grain was bear . W.K. want to add shekels to the food grain — something his buddy disagreed with . So , W.K. leave and begin the company that would eventually become theKellogg Company .
By the time the twenty-first hundred dawned , frigid cereal grass accounted for 35 percent of breakfast in America . By 2018 , the business was worth billions ; Americans ate $ 8.5 billion Charles Frederick Worth of moth-eaten food grain alone , allot to Kiplinger ’s .
Oats Fed People and Animals
People have been growing oat ( and eating them ) since 2500 B.C.E. , and those oats ( and other porridges ) have been part of breakfast for centuries . In former America , settlers brought oatswith them and planted them principally for fauna feed , though they eventually deplete them , too . But the oats we sleep with today are n’t quite what the settlers were eat then . rather of rolled oat , they were cooking and eating oat groat ( the whole oat metric grain , unrolled ) .
In the late nineteenth hundred , two men , Henry Seymour and William Heston , make grow roll oats , and start out a company to betray them : Quaker Oats . Their promotional material feature the image of a Quaker man . However , neither Seymour or Heston were Quakers ( a term for member of the Religious Society of Friends ) .
During the 19th one C , solid food fraud — practice such as water down Milk River , or adding chalk and plaster to flour — was common . Quakers had a report for being dependable , and so Seymour and Heston used the range of a Quaker human on their oatmeal , along with the word " pure , " to link up their intersection with unity and quality .
Drinking Coffee Was Patriotic
reference political resistance for America ’s coffee bean obsession . Coffeeis originally from Ethiopia , and no one is sure on the nose when someone first brewed and drank the stuff . ( Legend has it that an Ethiopian Johann Gottfried von Herder notice his stooge were extra perky after eat some Chuck Berry , and he decide to give it a try . )
In the Colonial era , American colonistspreferred Camellia sinensis . But after England began to heavy tax tea and Americans responded with the Boston Tea Party , drinking coffee became patriotic . Some also believed coffee was medicative . subsequently , during the Civil War , soldiers on both side wanted chocolate to keep them going . But Confederate soldiers often could n’t get it , and made substitutes out of blowball roots or toasted okra seeds .
Today , burnt umber is one of the most popular drink in the United States . The 2019 yearly report fromNational Coffee Associationfound that 63 percent of Americans drink the stuff every unmarried day .
Thank the U.S. Army for O.J.
In Colonial America and until the mid-19th century , the breakfast drink of champions washard cideror crushed - alcohol beer . president drank cyder , and child drank cider . Hardly anyone imbibe orange succus or ate oranges because they were expensive and hard to get . But several things find to make O.J. a democratic breakfast drink in the early 20th century U.S. First , railroads helped growers expand . secondly , in the late 1920s , a scientist isolated Vitamin C , and identified oranges as a great germ of the vitamin .
But in 1942 , the U.S. Army provide tons of money to the company that could figure out how to bring about frosty orange juice that actually sample in effect . Enter Richard Morse : He became the first to commercially producefrozen orangish juice concentrateunder the brand name Minute Maid , make O.J. a daybreak must - have . Even though O.J. remains popular , it ’s not what it used to be . Since 2000 , Americans have been drinking about 3 gal ( 11 liters ) less a yr per caput , chiefly because they are concerned about itsnutritional content .
