The word breakfast was first used in the 15th century to describe the first meal of the day, literally meaning “break the fast” from the prior nights meal. In these days it was considered gluttony to eat prior to dinner, dinner was known as the first meal of the day typically what we would now call brunch. Only the poor or sinful, it was considered blasphemous, would eat an early meal often the poor and hard labour being intermingled. Largely anyone who ate an early meal was looked down upon, so how did breakfast become the most important meal of the day? We can chalk that up to marketing and sugar!
Humans require carbs to burn in the morning to sustain a hard days labour, even sugar filled cereals have the essentials of carbs to burn with protein and fats from the milk. In the 15th century some form of grains was the choice for an early meal containing short and long term energy stores. Generally a large portion of protein such as meat was not great for getting up and going, preparation time and digestion times hinder performance.
Now a days we see marketing target children on nearly every box of cereal, smart move from a business standpoint. Cereal was actually the first industry to directly target children by adding sugar to cereal combining that with smart marketing as to stay within the required nutritional information for breakfast. Even the slogan “most important meal of the day” is a marketing tool started by Post during their battle of market dominance.
There is a huge crazy back story to the evolution of cereal, many bits of information that today we would consider despicable. Many things that have happened had it been more recent would cause all of society to boycott all breakfast cereal companies. Crazy to think it is still “the most important meal of the day” an untrue narrative pushed only by marketing.
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