A Brief History of Breakfast

For some, it’s the most important meal of the day, a time to calmly sit and fuel up before the mania of daily life begins. For others, it’s nothing more than a slice of toast as you rush out the door, cramming something vaguely edible into your mouth as you say goodbye to loved ones and sprint off for the morning commute. We are, of course, talking about breakfast. It’s a meal for which there is no great consensus—some bore on about its benefits, while many skip it altogether. But what is its history? When did people realize that morning sustenance was something worthwhile?

It might surprise you to learn that breakfast is actually a relatively new "invention"—for much of human history it simply didn’t exist. The diet-obsessed Romans, for example, ate only once a day because they believed it was better for digestion, and this mode of thought endured for a long time. The great theologian Thomas Aquinas opined in his Summa Theologica that to eat too early in the day was to commit the carnal sin of gluttony. Eating breakfast, it was believed, was ungodly and an indication of a weak, self-indulgent character. Exceptions were made for children, the elderly and laborers, but it was, as a whole, strongly discouraged.

Food writer Heather Arndt Anderson speculates that it was the importation of chocolate from the New World that opened to door to “breaking fast” in the morning hours. Wealthy Europeans were absolutely wild about it and couldn’t get enough of this delicious drink. Under pressure to change the rules, in 1662 the Catholic church finally gave in and declared that taking a chocolate drink in the morning was not sinful because liquid “doesn’t count” as food. 

This opened the door, but the idea of a regular morning meal really began to take hold during the Industrial Revolution. As working hours became regulated, factories filled with manual laborers; since the painstaking work they were undertaking required lots of energy, it was established that they needed to have something to eat in the morning. The United Kingdom was the first country to produce food en masse, and as such wealthy factory owners gave out small savory cakes in the morning to its workers. The city in the 19th century was a grubby, cramped place; it was impossible to rear animals in or to grow crops, so such handouts of mass produced food were essential for the growing workforce.

However, by the end of the 19th century breakfast was wasn’t just sustenance, it was an elaborate event. Wealthy Victorians built their homes with a special room just for breakfast which often included alcoholic beverages, heavy meat dishes and rich, sugary sweets.

The traditional meal of bacon and eggs was popularized in the 1920s by public relations and advertising pioneer Edward Bernays. Bernays’ client—the Beech-Nut Packing Company—had one prized product: packaged bacon. So Bernays sought to find a way to push the meat as an essential part of daily eating. He remembered that he had seen many people in England enjoying bacon in the morning (although this fad actually began in Scotland) and so bought it to the U.S., framing it as a hearty way to start the day. With the help of some medical colleagues, Bernays launched a study which found that the first meal of the day was in fact the most important. His aim was to convince the public that it was much healthier to have a strong, full breakfast than to eat something light. He sent the report to 5,000 doctors, who duly advised their patients on the importance of consuming fats in the morning, and his assertion has endured to this day.

In direct opposition to this decadence was the Clean Living Movement which encouraged vegetarianism and eschewed processed foods. One of its proponents, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, was a strong believer of the need for moderation in all things. He was certain that a light, easily digestible breakfast could rid one the lusty desires of the flesh, so he set out to develop a product that was not only convenient, but also morally consistent with his puritanical beliefs. His breakfast cereals were a smashing success. Looking to expand their market share, his younger brother, Will Keith Kellogg, believed that the real key to success was in adding sugar to their product. John strongly disagreed so Will struck out on his own in creating what would eventually become the Kellogg Company that we know today, while his brother John was prevented from using the Kellogg name for his cereals.

Cereal has since been a breakfast staple, though the heavier American and British style breakfasts of bacon and eggs endures to this day. It’s now popular the world over, and not without reason—who doesn’t love a plate piled high with delicious fried goodness in the morning? While in Spanish culture it’s still not the most typical way to start the day—it’s too heavy, perhaps, for the hot weather—in a cosmopolitan city like Barcelona ​​there are plenty of restaurants to visit for a delicious full-on breakfast fry up, especially in the tourist zones of the Barri Gòtic and El Born.

So, now that you know the history of breakfast you can see why there’s so many differing opinions on it. While it is indeed vital to give you energy for the rest of the day, people did without it for many thousands of years, and it does seem like the modern breakfast phenomenon started as a marketing ploy. Either way, when you next tuck in to a bowl of cereal or a plate of bacon and eggs, you’ll be aware of the history that has made it what it is today.