WEBVTT - Why Are Some Foods 'Breakfast Foods'? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.480 Welcome to brain Stuff, production of I Heart Radio. Hey 0:00:06.559 --> 0:00:11.320 brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum Here bacon, eggs and toast, coffee 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:14.160 and orange juice. If you grew up in North America 0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:18.239 or parts of Europe, you're probably picturing breakfast. But when 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:21.480 you think about it, anything nutritious and filling is enough 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:24.000 to get you going in the morning. So why are 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:28.160 these foods, as opposed to other equally tasty things relegated 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:32.199 to breakfast? For the article this episode is based on 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:35.239 How Stuff Works. Spoke by email with Dr Beth Forrest, 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:38.000 a professor of Liberal arts and Applied Food studies at 0:00:38.000 --> 0:00:40.680 the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:44.199 She said there are a host of influences that have 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:48.560 shaped the concept of breakfast, from older Christian beliefs, socioeconomics, 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:53.279 trade technology, medical theory, and constructs of nutrition convenience in marketing, 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:58.280 to name a few. The history of what Americans considered 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:00.920 to be breakfast food a trace as its roots back 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:05.440 hundreds or even thousands of years. Things like eggs, sausages, 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:08.400 and a version of pancakes were typical in ancient Rome, 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:11.200 though few people at that time eight early in the 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:14.800 morning and of course, although some foods have stayed the 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:20.800 breakfast course, the meal has also changed significantly. The Forest said, fish, beer, 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:22.959 and wine could be found on the table going back 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:25.320 to the medieval period in addition to foods that we 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:30.200 see today, eggs, bacon, bread, and cheese. Conversely, porridges, oatmeal, 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:33.160 and other grains would be consumed across meals and not 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:38.479 regulated to only the breakfast meal. But things changed during 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:42.000 the Industrial Revolution as people began to have less time 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:46.720 to devote to meals. Forest said, breakfast is often necessarily fast, 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:49.120 and the foods that are served for breakfast need to 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:53.400 be able to be prepared quickly. Time is just one 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:56.320 of the factors that's shaped what Americans know as breakfast. 0:01:56.920 --> 0:01:58.720 The rest of the story can be told through the 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:04.000 foods themselves. Take bacon and eggs, for example, that was 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:08.360 a PR stunt. The story goes like this. In the 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:11.639 nineteen twenties, beech Nut Packing Company wanted to get more 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:14.720 people to eat bacon. A beech Nut was a producer 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:17.880 of lots of foods at the time, including chewing gum, peanut, butter, 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:22.839 and pork. The company hired PR consultant Edward Burnet's, who 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:26.280 just happened to be the nephew of Sigmund Freud. They 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.800 found that most Americans ate light breakfasts, so beech nuts. 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:33.400 New campaign suggested a heavy breakfast would be healthier quote 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:36.400 because the body loses energy during the night and needs 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:40.120 it during the day. That message was spread in newspapers 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.480 around the country, and wouldn't you know, sales of bacon 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:47.720 began to skyrocket, and soon eggs and bacon were married forever. 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:53.000 Cold cereal has an even stranger history. It got its 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:56.239 start as a health food served to patients in sanatoriums, 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:59.600 that is, facilities where people went for long treatment stays 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:02.360 for me told or physical health. They were more like 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:08.880 retreats than hospitals. Dr John Kellogg yes that. Kellogg ran 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:12.240 a sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan, and made a type 0:03:12.240 --> 0:03:15.200 of granola out of wheat, corn meal, and oats, though 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:17.799 it was pretty much nothing like the granola we know today, 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:22.600 as it had no sugar or fat added. Nonetheless, Kellogg's 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:26.480 granola was so popular as a purportedly purifying cure all 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:29.080 health food that he was selling two tons a week 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:34.080 by nine. Because oates have to be soaked and then cooked, 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:37.800 Kellogg needed to develop something faster and easier to serve 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:42.440 at a sanatorium. His brother will Keith Kellogg helped experiment 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:45.800 with granola and they developed a process to make crispy 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:50.120 wheat flakes, the first flaky cereal. Four years later they 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:53.760 were selling toasted corn flakes, and cold cereal was born. 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:57.840 Will Keith wanted to add sugar to the cereal, something 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:01.800 his brother strongly disagreed with, so Will Keith left and 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:05.160 started the company that would eventually become the Kellogg Company. 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:09.720 The success of breakfast cereals in the US is much 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.400 more than a story of health food, though, it's another 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:16.520 example of the power of marketing. Forrest said, Dr Kellogg 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:19.719 promoted his corn flakes as healthy and spread his gospel 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:24.760 through cookbooks, public lectures, teaching kitchens, and marketing pamphlets. In 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:27.880 terms of the media, breakfast and breakfast foods have long 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:31.520 appeared in art and literature, and this can include advertisements 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:34.920 that appear in magazines and on television. Children in particular 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:38.720 have been targeted by marketing through cross promotional advertising, and 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:41.839 as early as nineteen o nine offered prizes tied to 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:46.719 cereal boxes. By the time the twenty first century dawned, 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:50.640 cold cereal accounted for thirty five percent of breakfasts in America. 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:55.239 By twenty eighteen, the business was worth billions. Americans alone 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.320 eight eight point five billion dollars worth of cold cereal 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:03.960 that year. Meanwhile, you can credit political resistance for America's 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:09.039 coffee obsession. Coffee is originally from what's now Ethiopia, and 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.560 no one is sure exactly when someone first brewed and 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:14.719 drank the stuff. Legend has it that a goatherd notices 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:17.919 goats were extra perky after eating some particular berries, and 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:21.560 he decided to give it a try. English colonists in 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:25.480 North America preferred tea, but after England began to heavily 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:28.839 tax tea and the colonists responded with the Boston Tea Party, 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:35.479 drinking coffee became patriotic. Some also believed the coffee was medicinal. Later, 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:38.880 during the Civil War, soldiers on both sides wanted coffee 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:42.600 to keep them going, but Confederate soldiers often couldn't get 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:45.560 it and made substitutes out of dandelion roots or toasted 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:49.440 oak reseeds. Today, coffee is one of the most popular 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:53.120 drinks in the United States. The twenty nineteen Annual Report 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:56.640 from the National Coffee Association found sixty three percent of 0:05:56.680 --> 0:06:01.080 Americans drink the stuff every single day. But let's talk 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:05.400 about orange juice. Until the mid nineteenth century, aside from tea, 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:08.640 the breakfast drink of champions was hard cider or beer, 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.520 a both very low and alcohol. Hardly anyone drank orange 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:15.320 juice or eight oranges at all because they were expensive 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:18.840 and hard to get. But several things happened to make 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:23.359 o J a popular breakfast drink in the early twentieth century. First, 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:28.040 railroads helped growers expand. A second, in the late nineteen twenties, 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:31.960 a scientist isolated vitamin C and identified oranges as a 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:36.520 great source of the vitamin. Then, in nineteen forty two, 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.680 the U. S. Army offered tons of money to whatever 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:42.640 company could figure out how to produce frozen orange juice 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:48.560 that actually tasted good. Enter Richard Morse. He became the 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:52.520 first to commercially produce frozen orange juice concentrate. His brand, 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:56.200 Minute Made, became a huge success and made orange juice 0:06:56.200 --> 0:07:00.000 and attainable morning must have. Even though o J remained 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:03.479 it's popular, it's not what eased to be. Today Americans 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:06.480 are drinking about three gallons. That's eleven lids less per 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.080 person per year than we were in the year two thousand, 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:13.960 mainly because people are concerned about its nutritional content. Juices 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:23.440 are sugary, after all. Now, where's my breakfast doughnut? Today's 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:26.040 episode is based on the article why are certain foods 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:28.720 eaten mainly at breakfast? On how stuffworks dot com, written 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:31.280 by Sean Chavis. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:33.320 Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:36.280 it's produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts from my 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:39.280 heart Radio visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:40.920 wherever you listen to your favorite shows.