28 May 2015
Breakfast through the Ages
by Lynda Goetz
Adelle Davis (1904-1974), an American health guru (about whom I know very little), has been attributed with the quote “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper”. I have also heard it as ‘Breakfast like a king; lunch like a queen and dine like a pauper’. Whichever quote you know or prefer, it has become generally accepted that it is far healthier to eat your bigger meals at the beginning or in the middle of the day rather than at the end. However, for so many of us, this is not actually how our life works and breakfast tends to be the meal which has least attention paid to it or gets skipped entirely. Breakfast, in fact, is the meal which seems to depend more than any other on where you live, what you do for a living, or what stage of life you are at; not to mention of course which century or which country you are living in.
As a child going to school in the Home Counties in the 60s, breakfast was a sit-down meal, which consisted, if I remember rightly, of a small bowl of cereal, followed by something cooked, followed by a piece of toast with honey, jam or marmalade. My mother used to do something different every morning; scrambled eggs on toast; eggs and bacon; tomatoes on toast; poached eggs on toast; sausages and beans; boiled eggs with ‘soldiers’. This was the accepted ‘norm’ in our household; so much so, that I remember the three of us children being quite shocked when my mother went into hospital to have my youngest sister and it transpired that my father was only able to manage boiled eggs – for an entire week!
As I entered my teens and became aware of the ‘weight issue’ I decided that a three course breakfast was not to be recommended (I had not heard of Adelle Davis at the time) and determined that if I were to lose the ‘puppy fat’ people seemed so keen on telling me I would grow out of, then I would need to change my dietary habits. Breakfast became two Ryvita, buttered on the flat side and with a scraping of honey. My ‘friend’ Alison, who was way ahead of me in all the imaginable stakes there were at the age of 14, informed me with an air of total superiority that I should reduce this to one Ryvita, replace the butter with low-fat spread and probably cut-out the honey as well. I went back to brown toast (with butter and honey).
By the time I was at University, breakfast had become even more ‘pauperish’ and consisted of nothing more than a small pot of unsweetened natural yoghurt poured over an apple or a few grapes. Well, it was for a few weeks, but then, as I was living in Hall for the First Year and breakfast was included, it seemed silly to continue with this regime, as it meant that by lunchtime I was starving and had to spend more on lunch in the Refectory. I went back to three-course breakfasts for the rest of that year.
After University I went to live in Spain. I was teaching English and as none of the classes started before 10am, breakfast was a leisurely affair. We squeezed fresh oranges; ground fresh coffee and ate rolls just purchased from the ‘Panaderia’ just across the road. On some days we had breakfast in one of the many cafes on the way to work, although we could never quite bring ourselves to copy many of the locals and have our ’tostada’ with oil and garlic. Great at dinner, but somehow not quite right first thing in the morning – although it did sometimes mean that we were very aware of our travelling companions on the bus!
At work in the City, life took on an altogether more hectic pace and breakfast in that era was a rushed affair; a fruit yoghurt grabbed out of the fridge and eaten in the bedroom whilst trying to find clean tights and a shirt; a banana eaten walking down the street on the way to the bus or the Tube; a bowl of muesli dry and dusty as the books on the shelf in the basement library at work or perhaps on a good day, when I wasn’t late, a piece of toast and a cup of freshly brewed coffee in the small but deliciously private garden of my ground floor flat near Holborn.
Marriage and the unbelievable luxury of a husband who wanted to cook breakfast for me. Bacon, tomatoes and brown toast with a cup of tea set me up for the entire morning. I loved the ritual, for a while. Then I began to think of all the different things I could have had for breakfast. I even recalled cheese and cold meats in Germany and Portugal, although at the time these had seemed odd and alien as a start to the day. The breakfasts petered out, only the tea remaining as the essential at the start of the day. Before long there were children to consider. Breakfasts became my responsibility to deliver to small hungry mouths and unlike my own mother I was not good at this aspect of my role. Once they were beyond the pureed apple and other ‘gloop’ stage, I’m ashamed to say my children were limited to cereals (although there were an increasing range of these available), toast and jam or fruit. They seemed not to mind and their lack of cooked breakfasts in childhood has not so far been a cause of complaint. I have to say that they did always seem mildly amused when, during the summer holidays we had visiting foreign students staying and they could rely on coming downstairs to find breakfast laid out like a ‘proper meal’. Well, I couldn’t let the country down, could I? I even managed to provide ‘the Full English’ at weekends, although this was a real struggle. ( I always felt that running a B&B would not be something I could manage – B&D yes, but not something that required me to pander to people’s desires to be fed like royalty at the beginning of the day rather than the end).
I suppose that laudable and healthy as Adelle’s adage may be, it really does come down in the end to a question of lifestyles. For those who are working on the land or who are getting up to go to the gym at 6am, the ‘kingly’ breakfast may not just be appropriate, but desirable. For so many others, who switch off the 6am alarm in favour of another five or ten minutes under the duvet, the ensuing panic/chaos as they get themselves and possibly partners and children out of the house in time for work, school or college may not permit of ‘royal’ collations, hot or cold, at this time of day. This does not of course mean that breakfast shouldn’t be healthy or indeed packed full of the nutrients needed to power you through the day, just that, in spite of the occasional business breakfast or power breakfast, I don’t think this is a meal destined in the 21st century for the grandeur which somehow seems implied in Ms Davis’s advice. Breakfast like a king, but bear in mind that being a king is not what it once was.
