Breakfast was invented to sell you cereal

Quick note before we start: I'll be on the Karen Hunter Show this Wednesday at 5:30pm Eastern, SiriusXM Channel 126, talking about healthy cooking. Tune in.

Today let's talk about the meal you were told you couldn't skip.

For most of American history, breakfast wasn't its own category of food. It was just the first meal of the day, put together from whatever was in the house. Cornmeal mush, potatoes, bread, beans, leftovers from the night before, and meat if you had it. Wealthier households ate more elaborately, but nobody had a separate aisle to shop from, because there was nothing in it.

Then a doctor named John Harvey Kellogg started serving flaked grains at his sanitarium in Michigan, tied to a whole set of beliefs about health and morality. His brother Will saw the business in it and added sugar. C.W. Post did the same. Within a few decades an entire category existed that hadn't existed before, and the companies selling it needed people to feel obligated to buy it every single morning.

That's where the rule came from. Cereal companies ran national campaigns telling people breakfast mattered more than any other meal. A 1944 Grape-Nuts campaign put it on the radio directly, and it stuck so well that most of us grew up hearing it repeated by people who had no idea they were quoting an ad.

So look at that aisle with fresh eyes. Sugar near the top of the ingredient list, fiber stripped out, then vitamins added back so the box can carry a health claim. It's dessert with a nutrition panel. People start the day with it, crash by 11, and blame their own willpower.

And notice how few options we actually have. Pull up any breakfast menu in the U.S. and you'll see the same 3 things arranged different ways. Eggs. Pork. Sugar, dressed up as pancakes, waffles, muffins, pastries, or a box of flakes. Fruit shows up as a garnish or a juice, and vegetables barely show up at all. Lunch and dinner get the entire world of food. Breakfast got a handful of items, and we've been rotating them for a century like there was never another choice.

There was. We just stopped looking, because somebody sold us a menu and we accepted it.

Your body doesn't need cereal in the morning. It needs fiber, protein, and something with color in it.

Mine looks different depending on the day. During the week at home it's simple: avocado toast with tomatoes and hemp

seeds, and a green smoothie. On the weekend when I have time, a potato frittata with spinach, tomatoes, and coconut bacon. And when I'm eating out, I ask for avocado in place of the eggs. Almost every kitchen will do it, and most people never think to ask.

Here's what struck me while I was planning this month's classes. Almost everything on the menu works as breakfast.

The basil tofu ricotta we're making on the 30th is excellent on toast with sliced tomatoes. The chili lime tofu from the men's class is a scramble waiting to happen. The power beet hummus goes on a wrap with greens and gives you fiber and nitrates first thing. Even the energy bites are a real answer to the mornings when you have 4 minutes and a commute.

None of it was designed as breakfast food. That's the point. Once you stop thinking in categories somebody else invented, the whole question gets a lot easier.

Two classes on Sunday, August 30th at The Wharf, one open to everyone and one just for men.

Come cook with me.

Dr. Ruby 🌿 | With love and light