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Breakfast is a relatively modern invention
- klingonopera 7y agoThere's a great four-part documentary by Adam Curtis about Edward Bernays, his career and the rise of marketing in the 20th century called "The Century Of The Self". It's available on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
- ncmncm 7y agoBernays was very proud of the work of Josef Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda mimister. He considered it the best kind of use of his work, steering the ignorant masses to support of a Great Man's ideas.
- whiteguilt 7y agoposts like this are proof this site is no longer worth visiting
- BrissyCoder 7y agoI've never eaten breakfast. I don't tend to get peckish until around 1ish and I always do my best work post-morning-coffee and pre-eating-anything.
- weregiraffe 7y ago>I've never eaten breakfast. I don't care.
- pks016 7y agoHow's your daily schedule? I have a very hard time following the conventional meals (Breakfast,Lunch,Snacks,Dinner). For me, I would like to shift the timings of these meals, but the cafeteria operates only in conventional times.
- paxys 7y agoSame for me. Intermittent fasting (no eating before noon or after 6pm) helped me lose like 40 pounds, and I now feel a lot more energetic and productive in the morning.
- namdnay 7y agoOffice job? Any kind of manual labour or outdoor activity, there's no way I can last the whole morning without eating.
- ramblerman 7y agoNot OP, but I will usually do an intense workout of ~1h at 7am fasted. I don't eat till about 2pm without issues. Of course that is still different from 4-5 hours of heavy labor. Although on weekends I've climbed mountains, and swam fasted without issues as well. You'd be surprised how easy it is, the hunger pangs are only the first few days.
- donpark 7y agoSo breakfast is an American invention? I ask because Korean words for breakfast and brunch existed even before America was founded.
- iopq 7y agoA Korean breakfast is completely different from an American one.
- isostatic 7y agoSo American breakfast is relatively modern?
- donpark 7y agoTrue although I've been having traditional Korean meals (mostly rice and lightly cooked vegetables) in America for decades. Having Korean supermarkets within driving distance is one of the hidden benefits of living in California.
- paxys 7y agoThe word breakfast itself also existed well before America was founded. The author doesn't claim that eating in the morning is a modern invention, rather the concept of breakfast that is marketed to us today. Don't know why the HN headline doesn't stick to the article's.
- wodenokoto 7y agoThis article tries to make it sound like the idea of breakfast - a meal in the morning - was a new invention, when it appears to actually be arguing that the types of meals associated with breakfast are new.
- bashwizard 7y agoI doubt it. The word "Frukost" (breakfast in english) has been used since the 15th century in sweden to describe the first meal of the day. Before "frukost" we used the words "dagvard" and "nattvard" to label the main meals during the day where "dagvard" was usually the first meal during the morning. It later shifted meaning and became what is now called dinner.
- barry-cotter 7y agoEverybody eating breakfast can be a relatively modern thing without the word being new. Plenty of people find eating breakfast unnecessary or they eat a very light one which they’d be well able to skip. Treating breakfast as a real meal instead of eating something small or whatever leftovers are there can have gone from rare to normative, which fits with breakfast being relatively modern.
- kasperni 7y agoFunny thing. Frukost in Denmark and Frokost in Sweden. Both came from the term vrōkost (tidlig kost) in Mittelniederdeutsch (Middle Low German) in the 15th century. In Sweden you still use Frukost for the first meal. In Denmark the usage has been replaced by Morgenmad (morning food) to refer to the first meal. And Frokost now refers to the middle meal (lunch).
- Uberphallus 7y agoFunnily that happens also in French. Déjeuner means literally breakfast (as in, breaking the fasting). But for some reason it moved to mean lunch, and to say breakfast you say "pétit déjeuner", or "little breakfast".
- Theodores 7y agoTry telling this to a two year old. By the time we get to be able to read the cereal packets we are likely to be agreeing with the marketing material and eating the product as if our lives depended on it. We will be fully indoctrinated by then. It doesn't matter how ludicrous this breakfast meal is, or how unnatural it looks, we fully believe that these products are made because the product owners care about our health and well being. In the days before the internet there was no way of finding out an answer to what breakfast is really about, you were kind of stuck with the marketing message. Even today when - for clickbait reasons - you read an article such as this one then it is going to come too late, one's habits of starting the day with sugar/fat/carbohydrates is very much a habit where change is not a realistic option. Changing one's diet is hard, almost as hard as changing one's mind. What I didn't get in the article was the point made about bacon being something that just farmers ate. There must be some other thing going on with bacon - was it something that changed as a product with refrigeration or factory farming?
- glangdale 7y agoI like breakfast foods (I'm a real sucker for those "big breakfasts" available at most Australian cafes) but I am really not that hungry in the morning. One of the easiest ways I found to lose weight was just to quit ingesting calories in the evening around 8pm and not eat until noon the next day - the whole 16:8 intermittent fasting thing before it was a "thing". I'm a bit crestfallen at the amount of dull breakfasts I shovelled into my face based on all that propaganda about how your body would go into some sort of horrible famine state if you missed a meal. I mean, hey, if you're actually hungry and you like breakfast cereal, go for it, but I was definitely taking on more calories for no apparent reason.
- julienreszka 7y agoHahahaha what an absurd statement.
- vfc1 7y agoSome of the highly processed cereal breakfasts should literally be forbidden, especially kids breakfast is very worrying. Seriously, take the cereals that you give your kids, and read the ingredient list, you will be shocked. The second ingredient in the list is usually sugar, and the third is often palm oil. The chocolate-like cereals are usually made of corn flour and not whole grains, which is even worst. Here is a very tasty breakfast that is very healthy, and easy to prepare, I eat it every day. Just take two tablespoons of rolled oats (not a lot of oats), and add frozen red fruits. Frozen fruits retain the majority of their nutrition, and are found everywhere and are very convenient. Blueberries, raspberries, etc. take a cup, cover with plant milk and a tablespoon of ground flack seeds. Mix and microwave for 1.5 to 2 minutes. Just to cut the red fruits potential acidity and to make it more fun, you might want to add a teaspoon of jam, not more. Take 1 banana, mash half and slice the other half. Mix the mashed half and put the slices on top. You won't be hungry until lunchtime, enjoy!
- arcticbull 7y agoOr just don't eat breakfast. The whole 3 meals a day thing is both new and just as social construct. You get used to not eating breakfast really fast, I stopped a decade ago. There's interesting research showing that meal timings are as important if not more important (assuming otherwise complete nutrient profile) than what you eat. Your body learns what high and low levels of insulin look like by experiencing both. Not eating as frequently reestablishes that baseline and helps avoid insulin resistance, and hence type-II. It also gives you a larger caloric budget over your remaining meals making it easier to lose weight.
- vfc1 7y agoI've been thinking about it to give a boost to my weight loss after this long winter. I have a couple of questions if you have a moment, do you feel energized in terms of work in the morning, or feel a bit slugish? If it goes away the lack of productivity, how long does it take to go away? And do you feel hungry in the late morning at first, how long until you don't feel hungry anymore? For what I heard so far, intermittent fasting is a great tool in the arsenal, but it's not more important than food choices so I haven't given it a go so far. Thanks for any insight on your experience, kind regards.
- code_duck 7y ago“Breakfast Is A Marketing Gimmick”, the actual title, seems to sum this up better than “Breakfast is a relatively modern invention”. I don’t think the article is trying to claim that that eating food in the morning is new. Personally, I have always gotten up and eaten the same things in the morning but I do the rest of the day. This might be due to hailing from New Mexico… Like the south, we enjoy a lot of hearty breakfast. The typical breakfast in New Mexico is huevos rancheros, which is eggs, hashbrowns and sausage or bacon smothered in NM red or green chile sauce. There is a traditional food eaten for breakfast in the Southwest and all of America south of here, though, which is basically corn porridge.
- kstenerud 7y agoThe problem is that the article is written in a confusing manner, and effectively conflates "breakfast" the act of eating in the morning with "breakfast" the modern marketed morning meal. You have to read it very carefully to get what he's trying to say. "breakfast" the act of eating in the morning has been around for centuries. Both titles are misleading.
- m0nty 7y agoThe writing is really odd. "According to the Dansville Historical Society, Jackson would create and use this cereal in his sanitarium in Dansville NY." Well, did he or didn't he? Why say "would create" when you meant "created"? "In 1878 Jackson would have a visitor to his medical facility, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg" Again ... "These institutions would teach that if you ate a healthy breakfast you could be more productive at work. Of course, that would be an excellent selling feature that would win over converts. Cereal companies would begin to pop up like weeds." I'm not usually so picky, natural voice, etc. But it seems odd to use "would" all the time.
- Terretta 7y agoIt’s a verb tense for when your story starts in the more distant past and then describes a future that will come to pass relative to that past. Makes more sense if you add the (unnecessary) additional words “go on to”. Here’s a guy at a past point in time. That guy would go on to create the cereal, and would go on to have a visitor ... Merriam Webster: past future adj. — of, relating to, or constituting a verb tense that is traditionally formed in English with would or should and denotes an action or state as future from a past point of view (as would write in “he promised that he would write”) More: https://www.thoughtco.com/future-in-the-past-grammar-1690811 https://www.thoughtco.com/future-in-the-past-grammar-1690811
- m0nty 7y ago> "These institutions would teach that if you ate a healthy breakfast you could be more productive at work. Of course, that would be an excellent selling feature that would win over converts. Cereal companies would begin to pop up like weeds." Why not "These institutions taught that if you ate a healthy breakfast, you would be more productive at work. Of course, that was an excellent selling feature and won over converts. Cereal companies popped up like weeds." I understand the tense being used, I'm just puzzled why anyone would want to use it so much.
- ptah 7y agopossibly a weak attempt at e-prime?
- rlue 7y agoWhen I discover that my beliefs have been shaped in part by a marketing message, I always have to restrain myself from overcompensating as I try to revise my worldview, as in: "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day." "No, that's marketing! I refuse to be manipulated. Breakfast is a scam!" When really, the truth is that breakfast is nice but everything is culturally relative and humans are capable of adapting to a surprisingly wide range of routines, provided you maintain them long enough to get through the rough patches. Sadly, that doesn't make for a very catchy slogan. Sometimes I think I'd be better off never having heard this notion at all, but hey, the cost of living in society is being exposed to infectious ideas.