Breaking fast at lunch

Two slices of toast with butter, half a grapefruit, a glass of milk, twelve ounces of orange juice, and a bowl of sugary fortified cereal soaking to a sludge -- you know this image. This standard advertising safety catch designed by the FDA and adopted by grain companies depicting what the correct American breakfast should be was burned into my head during my formative years and has remained with me to this day, much to my confusion and disgust. The cup of soulless black coffee staring at me probably wouldn't agree with my feelings on breakfast, wondering why it is the only thing I will consume from just after waking all the way to my noon lunch.

Did you gasp in horror? Yes, I do commit the sin of skipping the most important meal of the day, nearly every day. I cannot say that it is out of convenience or that I'm too rushed on my commute to the office and cannot find the small moment before my drive to eat something -- there is an entire world of cereal, muffins, pancakes, and pastries available at the corporate cafeteria that practically beg to be taken back to my cubical and eaten as I sit down to check my morning e-mail. In fact, I'm saying that it is exactly because of all of these things that I don't hunger for the first meal of the day. The problem is that the breakfast of champions hasn't been applicable to the American lifestyle for many years.

There are, of course, the arguments in favor of breakfast:

"It is needed to kick start the body's metabolism for the day. Without breakfast, you'll feel tired and sluggish."

Only if you're going to get out and do something active -- try jogging on an empty stomach and you'll quickly run out of fuel. Before I head out on my bicycle on the weekends for some activity, I'll eat a big bowl of oatmeal or some other energy food, but to sit at the office from nine to noon practically requires all the caloric intake of a single, unsalted peanut. Once upon a time, children rose from bed to walk to school and adults headed out to accomplish some physical task on the job. This hasn't been the case for years, as children are now driven to schools that lack a physical education program and adults slowly troll for the parking space nearest the front entrance of the office to enjoy the shortest walk possible. In a world where the average person skips the stairs for the convenience of the elevator to go up (or even down!) just one floor, there is no need for any energy kick start. No one needs the 390 calories from a bowl of cereal to power up their PC, much less the mountain of energy provided in the huge spread portrayed at the end of a General Mills commercial.

"Eating breakfast is good for weight loss. If you skip breakfast, you'll actually gain weight."

I've never experienced this. Ever. I believe the first meal wakes up your digestive system from its nightly rest and I found that eating breakfast actually results in me craving more food come lunch time than if I were to go without, causing me to eat more in the course of a day. That would be grand if I actually changed my day to be an active one by eating breakfast, but my day remains the same regardless of what I eat or don't eat in the morning. More calories in, more energy stored. For the six recent years I was at the correct weight for my height, I only ate food in the morning if I was going to exercise. Forgoing that bowl of Cheerios and banana didn't cause me to gain an ounce.

"Studies have shown that children that eat breakfast perform better in school than those that do not. Adults that eat breakfast perform better at work and are less moody."

I believe this, but only for breakfast foods that aren't processed/don't come out of a drive-thru window. I'm guessing what the average American eats has enough fat and carbs to induce a nice post-food coma rather than spark energy into their day. I'd also like to introduce the mentally slow and unhappy subjects in this study to a sturdy cup of coffee.

In all seriousness, I do recognize that breakfast is important, but the two caveats are that it is required that the person be active, daily, to take advantage of it and that what is eaten is healthy. Without both of these, the benefits completely vanish and more harm is done than good. This simply isn't advertised much -- we're more likely to hear about what we should be doing and what we should be eating, separately, not hearing about what we should be eating based upon our activity level. With the calories you would be consuming, you had better be raising a barn if you're eating every part of "a complete breakfast". In reality, no one eats that. What we Americans do eat, however, is much more disturbing.

Breakfast is considered the most important meal, yet it breaks nearly all the rules we consider core when regarding one. If you were served a ham sandwich every single day for lunch, you'd quickly become frustrated with the monotony and even become ill at the mere thought of eating one after three days. Yet, it is perfectly acceptable to expect children to eat from the same box of cereal every morning until it runs out. You wouldn't restrict your dinner to just a slice of chocolate cake, but it is somehow perfectly acceptable to eat a glazed cinnamon roll with the same nutritional value in the morning and call it a meal. Those "healthy" muffins they serve at my office with banana, nuts, and raisins? Well, they actually are cake -- they're made with store bought Betty Crocker mix. And, for some reason, our culture seems to demand that a breakfast either be delicious and incredibly disastrous for one's health or reasonable but tasteless, cold, and bland. Sunday's bacon, eggs, hash browns, and cheese grits contrast with Monday's unfortunate granola bar. Breakfast out means a stack of buttermilk pancakes slathered with butter and a side of sausage, but cooking in the AM at home means toasting an English muffin. The warm breakfast bowls of noodles, vegetables, and chicken or beef found in Asia has no equivalent, here, nor do the spicy morning meals of Indian curry or the grilled fish and miso soup of Japan. Nope, those sound too much like lunch and we all know you can't eat that kind of food before 11:30! Our weekday breakfasts are strictly functional -- we have no time, no desire, to do more. Cold grains in milk artificially colored to give the appearance of fruit flavor that have been fortified with iron and added vitamins because the base food material is nutritionally worthless. Toasted bread with plain butter. Would you like some instant cream of wheat from a packet? You can add a bit of sugar or milk to it if you'd like to make it more palatable. Flavorless puffed corn. Waffles with imitation blueberries! We would never punish ourselves like this at lunch or dinner.

It is entirely possible, as with most issues in my life, that my disgust with this stems from some childhood trauma from long ago. The creepy image of the child with the death-grin on the Farina box might be responsible, but the flavorless contents set before me in a bowl with a spoon and the weight of the parental expectation that I would happily slurp the watery mush down each morning before the bus arrived is equally suspect. I cannot describe how bad a bowl of microwaved Cherrios in hot milk smells when you've just pulled yourself from the depths of slumber, but someone in my household managed to eat it for years and, to my horror, even claimed to enjoy the foul concoction. Brand after brand of cereal both hot and cold, perfectly good breads rendered inedible by the heat of the toaster and coated with a mixture of butter and sickly sweet Smuckers corn-syrup based flavored jelly, various preprocessed microwavables that included "meat" -- I was told I had to eat these things in order to start my day. But even when the TV made this declaration back then, I didn't believe it, which is possibly why I don't buy it now.

Standard American breakfasts are a sham. There is likely a good balance to be found, something in between gruel and southern Sunday spread. I will find a companion for my coffee, someday, and maybe I'll even get off my ass to actually make use of it.

Until then, I'm brewing my breakfast.

...with the occasional beignet, perhaps. Mmmm.