I got to wondering if breakfast truly is the most important meal of the day. This is the time of year when everyone is on a diet, having just made unrealistic New Year's weight loss resolutions. The newspapers are filled with advice urging everyone to eat oatmeal and bran cereal as a healthy start to their calorie controlled meals, but it always seemed to me that the more I ate in the morning, the hungrier I was for the rest of the day. Certainly if you are a kiddo and have things to learn and balls to kick and teachers to torture, breakfast is the juice to get you going. But how about the rest of us? In America, we no longer spend the day plowing the back forty, so is the conventional wisdom of three squares a day an antiquated concept? It seems that current habit of breakfast on the go, power lunches and huge dinners consumed in front of the TV, minutes before falling asleep, is the fast track to larger pants.
I decided to do an experiment. In doing a little research, I found that cultures the world over have very different ideas of what constitutes breakfast. So I'm going to explore each school of thought. From biscotti and espresso, to the English breakfast of eggs, sausage, and fried tomatoes, to the many cultures that begin their day with the same foods they end it with, I'm going to try each one out for a few days, measure how long it takes until I'm ready to devour the next insect that flies by my car, and see how I feel each day. Maybe then we can determine how important breakfast really is. Stay tuned...
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