Tyranny of Breakfast: Five Alternatives from Around the World

“It’s not a breakfast until you stick two eggs on it.”

What’s with breakfast? Ever wondered why you eat what you eat for breakfast? Have you bought into the line, ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’? Ever wondered who said that?

Allow me to enlighten you.

A long time ago, pre-marketing bollocks, where branding bibles hadn’t been invented and no company owned a particular color and copy-writing was a flowery collage of Shakespearian quotes, everybody ate what they liked. There was no consensus on what constituted a breakfast meal.

Then along came the guardian of spiritual health and anti-masturbatory practices, Seventh-day Adventist, John Harvey Kellogg. He disliked wankers. He also disliked mixed races. Kellogg believed in purity, both in spirit and health, and through racial improvement and planned breeding. Yes, Kellogg's was an early adopter of eugenics.

This is the man responsible for Americans' breakfast enlightenment.

To prevent self-love, Kellogg suggested to all that cereal was the way to go. Stop beating the bishop and have some oats instead. Stop choking that chicken and guzzle a few bowls of this super-nourishing wholesome bran. Breakfast had now become a battleground for religious morality. Hard work is achieved through a lighter breakfast and less time fiddling with your todger.

Ever the grand old wizard of marketing, Kellogg directed a Michigan sanitarium that published a 1917 article by dietitian Lenna Cooper. Thus the phrase ‘breakfast is the most important meal of your day,’ is born.

Are you beginning to feel led down a certain path? That the choices you’ve been making all your life are no more than a marketing ploy to enrich the commodity barons of corn, meats, dairy, and soybeans? At least you’ve stopped masturbating right?

What did Americans use to eat before Kellogg's?

It would be no surprise to learn that freshness played a vital role. What’s fresher than an egg? And nobody is slaughtering a chicken first thing in the morning.

But bacon?

Yet another marketing ploy to sell more sliced-up rashing of pigs to consumers was pioneered by the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays in the 1920s. He managed to convince over 5000 doctors to prescribe a diet of pig meat with their eggs and went full-throttle promoting a hearty breakfast as the recommended diet of choice. A petition that resembled a scientific study added more weight to the idea that a hearty breakfast rich in protein was medically recommended.

Don’t get me wrong, a hearty breakfast is optimal for slaving through the industrial revolution or pummelling your way through a cotton field in the 19th century. Laborers the world over need as much energy and fuel as they can get. But office workers? Really?

The best thing about a cost of living or climate crisis or a world cup in a human rights abusive country is, there aren’t many voices talking about the obesity crisis anymore.

Back to freedom of choice.

You, the American public, have been brainwashed into buying shitty cereals pumped full of sugars and high in salt and multi-flavored flavorings that glow in the dark for too long. It’s time to rebel. It’s time to take back control of ‘the most important meal of the day.’

How does the rest of the world survive without cereal, eggs, and bacon? Here are five for starters!

India Depending on where you are in India, it’s a big country and the diet varies. In the South, it’s a full-on course of Masala Dosa. One of the few countries NOT to utilize eggs but high in potatoes and lentils.

Korea A communal style banquet that feels like hard work and made solely for families. The ajumma (old woman, unemployed and runs the house) slaves away creating several dishes for the men that include the staples of kimchi, rice, kimchi, eggs, kimchi, kimchi, and more kimchi.

Israel I love Israel and I stand with the Israelis but this? What the fuck am I even looking at? Can’t I stick with a falafel and a salad? A Shakshuka is a dish of eggs poached in a tomato sauce that’s flavored with onion, chili pepper, cumin, and paprika. A communal breakfast for all the family and a thousand guests.

France No one does less with breakfast than the French. Coffee is black and food is optional. A smear of jam or jelly is applied to the croissant. It’s civilization in a microcosm. The French refuse to eat as much as they refuse to work.

Australia I wouldn’t recommend this pile of dogshit for breakfast. Vegemite on toast is a disgrace to humanity. Another product bought to you by Kellogg's corporation of anti-masturbatory practices. It’s a filthy habit that defies all logic. File under chomping on congealed pigs' blood and mouthfuls of candy floss.

One final mention to the Dutch.

Yeah…they fling generous amounts of chocolate sprinkles onto their toast. It has a delightful name too, Hagelslag. In Australia, they call this shit ‘fairy toast’ and serve it to toddlers.

There you go. Five alternatives to break through the tyranny of Kellogg’s marketing bollocks. Breakfast should be about choice and whatever the fuck you think will get you through the day. There should be no rules. No demands for cereal and no obligatory bacon.

For the record, I like cheese on toast with slices of cucumber and a fresh pot of tea. I’m weird like that.

If you enjoyed this bollocks and are yet to become a member, use my referral by clicking this entire line. It won’t enrich your life, but I will allow you wank before breakfast.

Or you could subscribe in a similar fashion, regretting your choice as you realize article after article is full of no sustenance much like an American breakfast bought to you by Kellogg's.