Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum Here bacon, eggs and toast, coffee
Speaker 1: and orange juice. If you grew up in North America
Speaker 1: or parts of Europe, you're probably picturing breakfast. But when
Speaker 1: you think about it, anything nutritious and filling is enough
Speaker 1: to get you going in the morning. So why are
Speaker 1: these foods, as opposed to other equally tasty things relegated
Speaker 1: to breakfast? For the article this episode is based on
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Spoke by email with Dr Beth Forrest,
Speaker 1: a professor of Liberal arts and Applied Food studies at
Speaker 1: the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.
Speaker 1: She said there are a host of influences that have
Speaker 1: shaped the concept of breakfast, from older Christian beliefs, socioeconomics,
Speaker 1: trade technology, medical theory, and constructs of nutrition convenience in marketing,
Speaker 1: to name a few. The history of what Americans considered
Speaker 1: to be breakfast food a trace as its roots back
Speaker 1: hundreds or even thousands of years. Things like eggs, sausages,
Speaker 1: and a version of pancakes were typical in ancient Rome,
Speaker 1: though few people at that time eight early in the
Speaker 1: morning and of course, although some foods have stayed the
Speaker 1: breakfast course, the meal has also changed significantly. The Forest said, fish, beer,
Speaker 1: and wine could be found on the table going back
Speaker 1: to the medieval period in addition to foods that we
Speaker 1: see today, eggs, bacon, bread, and cheese. Conversely, porridges, oatmeal,
Speaker 1: and other grains would be consumed across meals and not
Speaker 1: regulated to only the breakfast meal. But things changed during
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution as people began to have less time
Speaker 1: to devote to meals. Forest said, breakfast is often necessarily fast,
Speaker 1: and the foods that are served for breakfast need to
Speaker 1: be able to be prepared quickly. Time is just one
Speaker 1: of the factors that's shaped what Americans know as breakfast.
Speaker 1: The rest of the story can be told through the
Speaker 1: foods themselves. Take bacon and eggs, for example, that was
Speaker 1: a PR stunt. The story goes like this. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, beech Nut Packing Company wanted to get more
Speaker 1: people to eat bacon. A beech Nut was a producer
Speaker 1: of lots of foods at the time, including chewing gum, peanut, butter,
Speaker 1: and pork. The company hired PR consultant Edward Burnet's, who
Speaker 1: just happened to be the nephew of Sigmund Freud. They
Speaker 1: found that most Americans ate light breakfasts, so beech nuts.
Speaker 1: New campaign suggested a heavy breakfast would be healthier quote
Speaker 1: because the body loses energy during the night and needs
Speaker 1: it during the day. That message was spread in newspapers
Speaker 1: around the country, and wouldn't you know, sales of bacon
Speaker 1: began to skyrocket, and soon eggs and bacon were married forever.
Speaker 1: Cold cereal has an even stranger history. It got its
Speaker 1: start as a health food served to patients in sanatoriums,
Speaker 1: that is, facilities where people went for long treatment stays
Speaker 1: for me told or physical health. They were more like
Speaker 1: retreats than hospitals. Dr John Kellogg yes that. Kellogg ran
Speaker 1: a sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan, and made a type
Speaker 1: of granola out of wheat, corn meal, and oats, though
Speaker 1: it was pretty much nothing like the granola we know today,
Speaker 1: as it had no sugar or fat added. Nonetheless, Kellogg's
Speaker 1: granola was so popular as a purportedly purifying cure all
Speaker 1: health food that he was selling two tons a week
Speaker 1: by nine. Because oates have to be soaked and then cooked,
Speaker 1: Kellogg needed to develop something faster and easier to serve
Speaker 1: at a sanatorium. His brother will Keith Kellogg helped experiment
Speaker 1: with granola and they developed a process to make crispy
Speaker 1: wheat flakes, the first flaky cereal. Four years later they
Speaker 1: were selling toasted corn flakes, and cold cereal was born.
Speaker 1: Will Keith wanted to add sugar to the cereal, something
Speaker 1: his brother strongly disagreed with, so Will Keith left and
Speaker 1: started the company that would eventually become the Kellogg Company.
Speaker 1: The success of breakfast cereals in the US is much
Speaker 1: more than a story of health food, though, it's another
Speaker 1: example of the power of marketing. Forrest said, Dr Kellogg
Speaker 1: promoted his corn flakes as healthy and spread his gospel
Speaker 1: through cookbooks, public lectures, teaching kitchens, and marketing pamphlets. In
Speaker 1: terms of the media, breakfast and breakfast foods have long
Speaker 1: appeared in art and literature, and this can include advertisements
Speaker 1: that appear in magazines and on television. Children in particular
Speaker 1: have been targeted by marketing through cross promotional advertising, and
Speaker 1: as early as nineteen o nine offered prizes tied to
Speaker 1: cereal boxes. By the time the twenty first century dawned,
Speaker 1: cold cereal accounted for thirty five percent of breakfasts in America.
Speaker 1: By twenty eighteen, the business was worth billions. Americans alone
Speaker 1: eight eight point five billion dollars worth of cold cereal
Speaker 1: that year. Meanwhile, you can credit political resistance for America's
Speaker 1: coffee obsession. Coffee is originally from what's now Ethiopia, and
Speaker 1: no one is sure exactly when someone first brewed and
Speaker 1: drank the stuff. Legend has it that a goatherd notices
Speaker 1: goats were extra perky after eating some particular berries, and
Speaker 1: he decided to give it a try. English colonists in
Speaker 1: North America preferred tea, but after England began to heavily
Speaker 1: tax tea and the colonists responded with the Boston Tea Party,
Speaker 1: drinking coffee became patriotic. Some also believed the coffee was medicinal. Later,
Speaker 1: during the Civil War, soldiers on both sides wanted coffee
Speaker 1: to keep them going, but Confederate soldiers often couldn't get
Speaker 1: it and made substitutes out of dandelion roots or toasted
Speaker 1: oak reseeds. Today, coffee is one of the most popular
Speaker 1: drinks in the United States. The twenty nineteen Annual Report
Speaker 1: from the National Coffee Association found sixty three percent of
Speaker 1: Americans drink the stuff every single day. But let's talk
Speaker 1: about orange juice. Until the mid nineteenth century, aside from tea,
Speaker 1: the breakfast drink of champions was hard cider or beer,
Speaker 1: a both very low and alcohol. Hardly anyone drank orange
Speaker 1: juice or eight oranges at all because they were expensive
Speaker 1: and hard to get. But several things happened to make
Speaker 1: o J a popular breakfast drink in the early twentieth century. First,
Speaker 1: railroads helped growers expand. A second, in the late nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: a scientist isolated vitamin C and identified oranges as a
Speaker 1: great source of the vitamin. Then, in nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: the U. S. Army offered tons of money to whatever
Speaker 1: company could figure out how to produce frozen orange juice
Speaker 1: that actually tasted good. Enter Richard Morse. He became the
Speaker 1: first to commercially produce frozen orange juice concentrate. His brand,
Speaker 1: Minute Made, became a huge success and made orange juice
Speaker 1: and attainable morning must have. Even though o J remained
Speaker 1: it's popular, it's not what eased to be. Today Americans
Speaker 1: are drinking about three gallons. That's eleven lids less per
Speaker 1: person per year than we were in the year two thousand,
Speaker 1: mainly because people are concerned about its nutritional content. Juices
Speaker 1: are sugary, after all. Now, where's my breakfast doughnut? Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article why are certain foods
Speaker 1: eaten mainly at breakfast? On how stuffworks dot com, written
Speaker 1: by Sean Chavis. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart
Speaker 1: Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and
Speaker 1: it's produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: heart Radio visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.