always interesting to discover where do the myths come from that we all assume to be true but one day, thanks to evidence-based science, we discover that they are not.
Something similar happens with the idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and that skipping it or not eating enough breakfast is bad for your health. Multiple studies, as well as nutritionists from around the world, suggest that this is not true. Skipping breakfast has no detrimental effects on health, and its benefits will depend on how healthy the food you eat for breakfast is. When it comes to taking care of yourself, it counts more that your daily diet is healthy than having breakfast or not having breakfast.
How did the idea spread that breakfast is “the most important meal of the day”? Abigail Carroll, author of Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal tells The Guardian that everything was the work of a handful of religious fanatics, the grain industry and the bacon industry.
They ate whatever was on hand for breakfast.
Historically, he says, breakfast was not a specially considered meal, nor was there a series of breakfast foods. people just ate what was on handwhich were often leftovers from the previous day.
In the 19th century, it was common for farms to eat breakfast eggs and bacon. Chickens lay their eggs in the morning and cooking them is quick and easy. Bacon is cured meat that is ready to be prepared at any time. Few people would have the time or the inclination to kill a chicken or a rabbit, but the bacon was already at hand.
Seventh-day Adventists
At the end of the 19th century, the industrial revolution arrived and people moved from the countryside to the cities, where they did jobs that involved hours of standing or sitting in the same place. a new one emerged worry about indigestion. The heavy breakfasts of the farmers were considered the cause of these indigestions and a lighter version of breakfast prevailed.
In this panorama, the religious current of the Seventh-day Adventists arose, who promoted within their doctrine a vegetarian diet, lighter, as part of his drive towards a more frugal and self-sacrificing life, and also as a method of avoiding the worst of sins: masturbation. One of the most famous breakfast cereals in the world, the Kellogg’sarose within this religion.
breakfast morality
This also served to introduce a moral aspect in food: Moral judgments were no longer reserved only for religion or health, it also affected the ideal of hard work. Eating a light breakfast was “better” because it helped you work hard and therefore be a better person.
It was then that the myth was born that a light but nutritious breakfast is the best for health. In the 1940s, two events coincided to keep cereals at the center of this myth: on the one hand, it was discovered the importance of vitamins and minerals, and cereals became champions of these nutrients; for another, women were entering the labor market and they needed to replace elaborate homemade breakfasts with something quick and nutritious for their families. Cereals were the answer.
The idea was created and implanted. A last push was needed to water it down. And that came from the hand of bacon, again.
Bacon and its “scientific” benefits
After the leading role lost to cereals, a publicist Serving the bacon and pork industry, he set out to put the traditional bacon and egg breakfast back on the stage. So he convinced a scientist to claim in a letter that a heavier, protein-rich breakfast, such as bacon and eggs, was healthier than a light cereal-based breakfast.
He sent his statements to some 5,000 doctors asking for your signature as backup, and then he sent it all to various newspapers passing it off as a scientific study. This renewed the prominence of this type of breakfast, while reinforcing the idea that breakfast is especially linked to health.
That moral aspect of breakfast has reached our days almost intact: we judge more harshly what others eat for breakfast than what they eat or dine. And we owe everything to interests, not to scientific evidence.
This article was originally published by Rocío Pérez in October 2017 and has been revised for republication.
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