Cereal Propaganda
One of the most infamous lines of all time is “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” I can hear my mom saying it to me right now. It is as if I got up late to leave for school in 6th grade. We are rushing out the door in a hastened attempt to get to school on time. In this race to beat the bell, breakfast was skipped. Once we get in the car there’s that line she says, “you know breakfast is the most important meal of the day Chance.”
But what if it isn’t?
As I have grown older the less and less I eat breakfast. I would not say that it is because I don’t like it. I think most of my favorite foods are breakfast foods. It just comes down to the fact that I’m just not hungry before I start my day.
So whats the research on breakfast?
Research shows that there is a strong correlation between skipping breakfast and obesity. It also shows that men who skip breakfast tend to also have hardening in their arteries that can lead to heart disease. But take a closer look. It is stated in most of these studies that those who skipped or ate light a light breakfast were already living unhealthy lifestyles. These people already had unhealthy diets for their other meals and were avid smokers and drinkers. So is skipping breakfast the cause or the effect?
But lets even take a look deeper into the origin of breakfast being considered the most important meal of the day.
“In many ways, the breakfast is the most important meal of the day, because it is the meal that gets the day started…It should not be eaten hurriedly, and all the family, so far as possible, should partake of it together. And above all, it should be made up of easily digested foods, and balanced in such a way that the various food elements are present in the right proportions. It should not be a heavy meal, consisting of over five to seven hundred calories” -Leena F Cooper in Good Health Magazine 1917
There it is, the first time breakfast got ranked ahead of all other meals. But what is the magazine Good Health? Well it is none other than one of the oldest magazines. But more importantly its editor was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Does that name ring a bell?
Here is a link.
It is no coincidence that the editor of a popular health magazine that was pushing a breakfast first agenda was also a co-creator of modern cereal. What’s a better way to sell more cereal than to make the public think that breakfast an important meal but it should also contain something that should be “easily digested.”
So is breakfast actually the most important meal of the day or is it 80 years of cereal propaganda and faulty surveying?
