How ‘Bacon and Eggs’ Became the American Breakfast

http://www.americantable.org/2012/07/how-bacon-and-eggs-became-the-american-breakfast/

by boh • 13 years ago

60 105 13 years ago

rodedwards• 13 years ago

Well, now I'm hungry.

th0ma5• 13 years ago

For some reason I want to associate this with the fact that names that become generic can make you lose your trademark. I'm thinking of course of Kleenex (brand tissues) and Velcro (brand hook & loop fasteners), both of which are so synonymous with the entire category that my spell check doesn't underline them.

I want to think of that as a monopoly on the concept, and if you have that, then you lose control simply because the public equates the name with the thing solely. I think this is fair as a monopoly is not welcomed generally, so it makes sense that you can have something so popular it loses its trademark and becomes a commodity in the mind.

This story here however makes me want bacon now a little less, though.

mathattack2• 13 years ago

Believe it or not, though, bacon’s association with the American breakfast is barely a century old

I'm not sure why this would be hard to believe at all.

In the 1920s, Bernays was approached by the Beech-Nut Packing Company – producers of everything from pork products to the nostalgic Beech-Nut bubble gum. Beech-Nut wanted to increase consumer demand for bacon. Bernays turned to his agency’s internal doctor and asked him whether a heavier breakfast might be more beneficial for the American public. Knowing which way his bread was buttered, the doctor confirmed Bernays suspicion and wrote to five thousand of his doctors friends asking them to confirm it as well. This ‘study’ of doctors encouraging the American public to eat a heavier breakfast – namely ‘Bacon and Eggs’ – was published in major newspapers and magazines of the time to great success. Beech-Nut’s profits rose sharply thanks to Bernays and his team of medical professionals.

The irony is that this is at least half right. Eating protein for breakfast is considered healthy. Perhaps there are better ways to get protein than bacon and fried eggs, but it's not completely off base.

mef• 13 years ago

Citation for the protein assertion?

mathattack2• 13 years ago

http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/many-benefits-breakfast

http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/benefits-lots-protein-mornin...

http://greatist.com/health/high-protein-breakfast-benefits

None of this says eat bacon and eggs every day, but it is pro-protein. Sometimes I'll cook peas with eggs, or have high protein yogurt (Siggi's or Chobani) or turkey bacon rather than picking up the fat in regular bacon.

Of course if my midsection would allow it, I'd have a pound of the good bacon every morning!

dylandrop4• 13 years ago

Before this, the majority of Americans ate more modest, often meatless breakfasts that might include fruit, a grain porridge (oat, wheat or corn meals) or a roll, and usually a cup of coffee.

Pretty hard to argue that bacon is really as healthy as oatmeal & fruit.

Just for reference, fried eggs have a crapload of cholesterol (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=fried+egg) and bacon is pretty fattening and in general, not too great on cholesterol either (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2+strips+of+bacon). And this doesn't even include all of the oil these things are fried in.

liquidcool• 13 years ago

However, eggs have equal amounts of good (HDL) and bad (LDL) cholesterol, so most nutritionists feel they cancel each other out and hence eggs aren't considered bad. Few are recommending bacon (although Canadian bacon is fairly lean).

nazgulnarsil• 13 years ago

Dietary cholesterol is not well correlated with blood serum cholesterol. Dietary fat is also not "fattening." I really wish people wouldn't mindlessly repeat nutritional maxims, they cause a lot of harm.

rayiner4• 13 years ago

Dietary cholesterol and dietary fat have very little to do with blood cholesterol and body fat.

svachalek• 13 years ago

My wife is pregnant and dealing with gestational diabetes so recently I'm learning to track all this stuff. You'd be amazed at how bad an oatmeal and fruit breakfast can wreck your blood sugar (as in double it in a matter of minutes). Bacon may not be the best protein source but getting a little protein and fat in the morning calorie mix is really a must.

bluedino4• 13 years ago

> I'm not sure why this would be hard to believe at all.

It's very hard to believe - bacon, cured in salt was a preserved food and you will find references to it in almost any account of American history.

The early settlers in the 1500's brought pigs to America and it's been an American staple ever since.

patrickg_zill• 13 years ago

A keto diet would see bacon and eggs as completely normal, provided you didn't have a lot of toast with it.

ronilan• 13 years ago

Somewhat OT but there is this old story - a startup is just like bacon and eggs.

In a startup, all employees are contributors while the founders are commited. Same as in bacon and eggs. The chickens are contributors but the pigs are commited.

And the outcome? If you want the biggest share you need to be a pig. And you can only do that if you are not a chicken.

ajlburke• 13 years ago

Yeah but what happens to the pigs in the end? Chickens are still around afterwards to lay more eggs.

biondim• 13 years ago

At least as long as they still have eggs to lay. Once they run out they are tossed (as in thrown into a landfill). Net / Net, it doesn't end well for either party.

gxs• 13 years ago

I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's amazing how many of our american "traditions" are a result of marketing.

While there is nothing inherently bad about this, it definitely gives me a sense that something is not authentic when I come to learn it was the result of a marketing campaign.

This bacon and eggs breakfast is just one example. Grilled cheese and tomato soup is another. Can anyone recall any others?

Anechoic• 13 years ago

Can anyone recall any others?

Diamonds, and the various "Hallmark" holidays come to mind.

404error• 13 years ago

Rudolph the red nosed reindeer was part of a marketing campaign for Montgomery Ward.

http://theweek.com/article/index/237421/the-origin-story-of-...

teh_klev2• 13 years ago

"Grilled cheese and tomato soup" - at first I thought you were having a laugh. Then I googled. I like to think of myself as widely eaten (hence being widely sized), but that's a new one on me. I do vaguely remember in British "bistros" seeing soups topped with cheese (and sometimes with pastry) then salamandered until the bowl (or glazed pot as was the vogue back then) was so bloody hot it removed your fingerprints, and you daren't eat a mouthful until it cooled, lest it blistered your tastebuds. This was in the 70's and 80's, but never with tomato soup, usually some nasty fish bisque type of thing.

sp332• 13 years ago

Just to be clear - GP is referring to a grilled cheese sandwich, served with tomato soup.

gohrt3• 13 years ago

You are describing how French onion soup is prepared today in the USA

jonnathanson3• 13 years ago

Ex) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deoderant

Ex) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listerine

Ex) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallmark

Ex) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploughman%27s_lunch (UK example)

hfsktr• 13 years ago

The first two are fine by me. Sadly a lot of the teens I meet (younger siblings) think that soaking themselves in Axe means they don't smell.

With a history like Listerine's I'm surprised I've never come across a chain email about it [1 (the margarine section)].

[1] http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/butter.asp

philbarr• 13 years ago

I was going to say Santa and Coca Cola, but then googled to see if I was wrong and found this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7152054.stm

R_Edward2• 13 years ago

The lavish white wedding dress and all the Bridezilla-esque trappings?

JPKab• 13 years ago

This. The best decision my wife and I ever made was to go to a Justice of the Peace and the courthouse instead of the bullshit charade that is a modern wedding. While my version was rather extreme, my two sisters are better examples.

Sister 1 had a large, expensive, lavish wedding.

Sister 2 chose my father's rural backyard in the woods overlooking coastline. My father and I erected a gateway made of driftwood, and covered it in leaves and flowers. No money was spent, other than my sister's cheap, plain white dress and the groom's simple suit. It was a beautiful, simple ceremony. The groom's great grandmother remarked on how the wedding was "the way weddings were before everyone went crazy."

Yhippa• 13 years ago

Cotton: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/making-cotton-fab...

joe_the_user• 13 years ago

"Country" Music is an amalgam no more traditional than rock and roll - it's worth mentioning mostly because it gives much more of an impression of being traditional.

debacle5• 13 years ago

I would say less so. Rock and Roll is the result of American sound moving east to Europe, then back to the US, and then back to Europe again, over the course of about 20 years. Rock evolved. Modern country music is closer to hiphop than rock these days.

atwebb• 13 years ago

Which country music are you talking about? The country genre itself was born at the Bristol Sessions correct? It was a gathering of traditional musicians from all over Appalachia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. I guess that music got marketed but the songs and players themselves were about as authentic as anything I can think of.

xi• 13 years ago

Orange juice?

...The Florida industry’s aggressive marketing of oranges and orange juice is a key feature of orange juice history, as it slowly developed demand for the product. In 1907 oranges became the first perishable fruit “ever” to be advertised. As crops expanded quickly, marketing became crucial to avoid overproduction. The growth of farmer cooperatives came largely out of a need to market the products. The Florida Citrus Exchange was organized in 1910 to market fresh citrus and also to do research on processing citrus. It created advertising programs and “built national and international sales organizations.”

http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/312073.html

fintler2• 13 years ago

This appears to be a sample of one of their newspaper announcements from 1922 (today was the first time I noticed that Google has replaced the ritual of asking a librarian for microfiche rolls).

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2293&dat=19220917&id=X...

It's interesting that there's a small part at the end where it mentions that a heavy lunch is best, but most of the article is about a heavy breakfast.

It seems like a lighter breakfast would be the healthier option, but I can't seem to find any studies to back that up.

nobodysfool• 13 years ago

I tried to find more information about this "pie zone" but was unable. Were pies assigned to zones at that time? Just what was going on with pie in the 1920's that they had to have their own zone?

fintler2• 13 years ago

I really have no idea, but here's my current guess.

From the page at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melton_Mowbray_pork_pie#Melton...

Protection was granted on 4 April 2008, with the result that only pies made within a designated zone around Melton, and using the traditional recipe including uncured pork, are allowed to carry the Melton Mowbray name on their packaging

So, it appears that a "pie zone" may be a "Protected designation of origin".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origi...

However, applying this to the context of the article barely makes sense. Perhaps the 1920s "pie zone" is what eventually evolved into the 2008 law?

eggoa• 13 years ago

This is hardly the most sinister of Edward Bernays' campaigns. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom

bishun• 13 years ago

For those inclined to investigate the affects of psychology [theory] on modern society, and how it has been adapted both commercially and by government, I suggest checking out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

Edward Louis Bernays was related to Sigmund Freud. This relationship and more is expounded upon in the above documentary, which is definitely worth watching (imho).

diydsp• 13 years ago

I second the Century of the Self. Also, a book was published in 2002 on Bernays . I found it extraordinarily interesting. [1]

When Bernays was hired to get more books sold, he persuaded architects to design houses with bookshelves built into them. on the principle that "nature abhors a vacuum." A slick mofo indeed.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Father-Spin-Bernays-Relations/dp/0...

bobbyi_settv• 13 years ago

The documentary is available for free on archive.org: http://archive.org/details/TheCenturyOfTheSelf

binarymax2• 13 years ago

Bacon is one of the few things that I refuse to eat. I don't understand how anyone likes the stuff.

It makes me wonder, if the all-American breakfast was a bowl of fruit and a glass of milk, would there have been an obesity epidemic?

beachstartup2• 13 years ago

I don't understand how anyone likes the stuff.

i can see how someone wouldn't want to eat bacon (for a variety of reasons, health, veganism, sodium intake, religion.... lots of things), but i can't see how they "don't understand" how anyone likes bacon.

it's primarily fat and salt. how is this a huge mystery to you? you REALLY don't undersatnd how a fatty, salty pork product is popular?

_REALLY_?

jl6• 13 years ago

"I don't understand" is an idiom in which the user feigns ignorance in order to paint an opinion as so irrational that the only explanation for it being held must be some unknown mitigating factor. With the holder of the opinion typically absent, no such mitigating factor is offered, and through a kind of proof by contradiction, the user hopes to score a victory for his opposing viewpoint without having to actually come up with any arguments.

tptacek3• 13 years ago

Yes. People who eat bacon and eggs for breakfast are probably demographically favored not to be obese, because they by implication have access to a grocery store and time to prepare their own food.

dylandrop4• 13 years ago

Uhhhh.... unless they don't make the bacon and eggs themselves.

See: Denny's, McDonald's, Burger King, etc.

This is not to say that bacon and eggs are solely responsible for the obesity epidemic, but I think it's kind of silly to say that the only people who eat bacon and eggs are those who cook it for themselves, or are more healthy.

binarymax2• 13 years ago

Of course now that is the case. I am considering the originating cause and effect of salt and fat as a full and necessary way to start your day in a core cultural aspect. Given dietary science has come a long way since the early 1900's, I am just daydreaming and speculating on an alternate reality.

jlgreco• 13 years ago

Also, this might just be me stereotyping the obese, but waking up early and having a full breakfast is not something I have typically associated with obesity. I associate that more with people who's jobs involve waking up absurdly early and manual labor (probably the only time in my life when I was regularly eating breakfast is when I was working on farms. You need that extra energy to get to lunch) or with people who have the means and time to make breakfast. Waking up at 9am and eating a box of chocolate-frosted sugar bombs, or perhaps eggs and bacon for dinner? Now we're talking.

nightski• 13 years ago

I'd guess sugar and high GI foods are more responsible for this than bacon. For example I'd imagine sugar coated cereals are likely more to blame than bacon.

jrockway• 13 years ago

Trust me, people aren't getting fat off of bacon and eggs. They're getting fat off of sugar water.

The simple answer is satiety vs. calories. Bacon and eggs have a lot of calories, but you feel full for a while after eating them. Sugar water has almost as many calories, but you never feel full. So you drink 3000 calories of soda a day, and then you're fat.

Basically, any premade food you find in the store is designed to not satiate you, so you eat (and buy) a lot of it. The food companies have shareholders that want 10% YOY growth, and the best way to get that growth is to get you to eat 10% more calories. Since most people buy processed food rather than cook their own, they get 10% fatter every year.

(As someone who occasionally eats processed food, I'll tell you that it never makes you feel full, and you can definitely pack on the pounds without noticing until it's become a real problem.)

jere• 13 years ago

Bacon and eggs have a lot of calories

I don't disagree with most of what you said, but a lot of people don't realize that eggs aren't really that high in calories. A large egg is ~70 calories. 2-3 is the most you usually get in a restaurant, so you're talking 200 calories for a meal. That's nothing.

Bacon on the other hand....

Anyway, let me just say that this thread is like stepping into some kind of bizarro world. Bacon is so ridiculously delicious that I'm having a hard time believing this article.

crazygringo• 13 years ago

Are you American?

In many parts of the world, "bacon" is almost entirely fat, sold at room temperature, and kind of gross. I've met a lot of non-Americans that were totally grossed out by bacon in their home country (with good reason), until they ate properly fried bacon, with good meat content, in the US. Every single one became an instant convert. :)

However, there are certainly plenty of people who think it's too heavy for breakfast, at least most days.

March_Hare• 13 years ago

Funny that you mention American bacon as having a good meat content as I've only ever seen streaky bacon in the states, which tends to be very fatty. I wouldn't even know where to buy back bacon in the midwest.

bluedino4• 13 years ago

The glass of milk goes with the bacon and eggs - but fruit really wasn't something most Americans had in the 1800's. Access to a cow, pig, and chicken were common though.

What's the reason beef became so popular over lamb/goat/deer? Americans seem to stick to beef/chicken/pork when it comes to meats.

bkmartin• 13 years ago

Beef, chicken, and pork are the cheapest most cost efficient animal proteins to produce. Its more of a matter of yield and fat content (eg. flavor). A single beef steer can produce more than 600lbs of meat. You can't get that much meat from a lamb, goat, and deer combined. Heck you couldn't get that from 2 of each of them. So you feed 1 mouth and get lots of yield. Chickens are the easiest of the poultry to raise and most versatile for cooking. Almost everyone eats chicken, so high demand. Even people who "don't eat red meat" will eat chicken and fish. And then there is the pig. Easy to domesticate, produces delicious meat at a high yield... and Bacon. Lamb, if prepared properly can be very good. But beef, chicken and pork are much more forgiving.

*grew up raising beef, chicken, and pork. Hunted deer. Had a pet goat (he was a jerk). Never raised sheep, but wouldn't mind having some lamb in my freezer.

teh_klev2• 13 years ago

I feel the same about liver, kidneys and other dark coloured wobbly bits in an animal. But hey I know a few older folks who eat both bacon AND these suspicious looking parts and they're perfectly healthy, normal sized and don't have health problems. Obesity isn't caused by bacon alone, it's lack of exercise, hugely fat and suger laden treats and booze...amongst other things. Having bacon for breakfast also makes you less hungry during the day and so you snack less on crap until the next meal. The problem with fruit is that you burn through it on no time at all and within and hour and a half you're hungry again. Bacon seems to have an excellent slow release of energy and provided you don't scoff the crispy fatty rind is perfectly healthy.

B-Con• 13 years ago

Bacon is one of the few things that I refuse to eat.

I don't refuse it, but I don't really care for it. It's pretty much just fat, which I don't find appealing.

rayiner4• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure I could lose weight on a bacon and eggs diet.

A strip of pan-fried bacon has 40-50 calories. 3 strips is a pretty filling portion, because it's so rich, and that has 120-150 calories. Fry a couple of eggs in the bacon grease, and you've got yourself another 160 calories, for a total of 280-310 calories. In comparison, a fruit cup and a glass of 2% milk will probably be pushing 200. Importantly, with the bacon meal you won't be hungry again until lunch, while with the fruit and milk you'll be hungry by 10 am and run the risk of eating too much at lunch.

Americans are fat because of perverse incentives in the restaurant industry. For example, your morning coffee place never used to make much money. Black coffee, which has like no calories, isn't a high-margin business. Enter Starbucks, which upsells you on coffee with sugary syrup and high-margin pastries. Nobody would pick up a 6-ounce sirloin steak or 10 slices of bacon with their coffee, but will happily pick up a blueberry scone that has just as many calories. Restaurants also upsell you on portion sizes, because selling you twice as much food for only 50% more is very profitable when food costs are a fraction of your total costs. The difference between a sensible sized plate of pasta and the portions you get in American restaurants is 10 slices of bacon easily.

Fuzzwah• 13 years ago

One of the most disappointing things I ran into when I moved from Australia to the US was American bacon.

Oh how I miss Australian bacon: http://3hourspast.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/picture-28.png

Because to me, American bacon is just the crappy bit which is attached to the awesome bit.

http://www.foodsubs.com/Photos/bacon.jpg

tptacek3• 13 years ago

Why would I want a knob of pork loin stuck to the end of my bacon?

grecy2• 13 years ago

I'm in the same boat.

Keep your eyes out for "Canadian bacon". It's not identical to Aussie bacon, but it's pretty damn close, and lots of supermarkets in the US carry it (being that it's foreign, and-all)

Don't get me started on what I would do for a good meat pie, sausage roll, or fish and chips. I haven't been home in 7.5 years...

debacle5• 13 years ago

Where do you live that you can't get any of those things? Sausage rolls and meat pies are winter staples where I live (in the US).

Sargos• 13 years ago

That looks more like ham. Bacon is good because it's thin and (sometimes crispy) with lots of amazing fatty pieces.

debacle5• 13 years ago

Don't buy cheap bacon? I can get hand-cut bacon at my grocery store that looks a lot better than the bacon you posted in your first picture.

America's food politics create strange ripples around our food economy which make buying locally or more healthy seem difficult or irrational, because the price of bad food that has traveled a long way is artificially deflated.

poulsbohemian• 13 years ago

Your "Australian" bacon looks exactly like what I get from my local butcher (which sources from local ranchers...) in Small Town USA. You might not be able to find it at the big chain supermarkets, but I bet you can find a Mom and Pop butcher somewhere near your location.

rdl• 13 years ago

It's interesting that the traditional NASA launch morning breakfast is steak and eggs -- apparently protein/fat foods don't cause gas or other GI upset in space, unlike breads, etc. http://www.who2.com/blog/2009/07/t-minus-2-days-and-counting... (although this seems to be less the case now)

(Which is why "steak and eggs at [the place astronauts go before launch]" is the ideal answer to "what do you want your last meal on Earth to be".)

R_Edward2• 13 years ago

Eggs don't cause gas? All I'm gonna say to that is that you do NOT want to be within 4 cubicles of my co-worker during the couple hours after he has an omelet for lunch!

Luc• 13 years ago

Nowadays astronauts launch from Russia, where the tradition is a double enema before launch.

I don't know what they have for breakfast, but I guess it doesn't matter much!

ssttoo• 13 years ago

Wasn't the story of the orange juice the same? Overproduction + marketing as healthy = tradition (no sources, sorry, something I saw on TV)

shn• 13 years ago

Who said that eating pork is good and allowed to swallow in the first place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46G_DcnKOsU&feature=youtube_...

riffraff• 13 years ago

wait: isn't fried pork and eggs a staple of the whole english speaking world's breakfast?

Granted, back bacon is a magnitude better than streaky bacon, but it's still basically pork&salt :)

jusben1369• 13 years ago

Did anyone else find this article to be bizarrely written?

i) To this day Dentist's applaud adding fluoride to water as a having a huge impact on reducing cavities. I know some folks don't like it being done and dispute it but this article dismisses it as though it were some bizarre fad. ii) drinking glasses were very unsanitary. Moving to paper cups wasn't the right answer; having better hygiene around washing glasses were. But he was responding to what had then become well known. That disease/flu etc would sweep through houses mostly because people shared the same drinking material and didn't clean them very well. iii) 5000 doctors agreeing that a protein driven breakfast is some sort of sham? Maybe it was but you'd want a little more proof than "And this Doctor wrote to 5000 who all agreed because.....?"

This is kind of junky to be on HN homepage.

bane4• 13 years ago

A bit of hyperbole, but having married into an East Asian household and spent lots of time traveling around the world, I'm soundly convinced that a well defined breakfast meal, with its own traditions, foods and culinary style, is one of the greatest inventions of western civilization.

I have to question this article because the American breakfast is pretty much just a local variant on the traditional full breakfast [1][2] popular in the UK and Ireland -- and you find similar meals in Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand...kinda what you'd expect.

But as a meal, it's unbelievably awesome. Far better than some reheated fermented bean soup, a bowl of cold rice and some cold fish (which is what I get served when I visit my in-laws).

Actually, the truth is, I can eat local food almost anywhere in the world for 2 meals a day, but breakfast...there's something really special about a full breakfast. Even if I can't swing a full breakfast, I can almost always cook up some eggs and eat a sweat pastry or something from a local bakery I bought the night before.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_breakfast

2 - http://www.englishbreakfastsociety.com/english-breakfast/his...

spongle2• 13 years ago

Fuck yes. The best part is the full English has changed into the "all day breakfast" in the last 20 years.

When some asshats blew up half of London in 2005, I had a full English breakfast (at 2pm) and two cups of tea, then walked 16 miles home and still wasn't hungry when I got in :)

Can't beat it.

Asterick62• 13 years ago

Calm down new user. No need to get emotional and swear. And this story isn't very useful; the original submission is off-topic as well.

nsenifty• 13 years ago

Have you tried Indian breakfast? https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=indian+breakfast

bane4• 13 years ago

Thanks! I appreciate Indian food quite a bit when I can get it even if I don't know much about it.

So I took a look here http://blog.mahindrahomestays.com/a-taste-of-india-typical-i... and some of these look like they'd be nice diversions every once in a while.

oftenwrong• 13 years ago

not everyone agrees http://eatingasia.typepad.com/eatingasia/2010/03/in-praise-o...

bane4• 13 years ago

Ha! Some of this looks quite a bit like what my in-laws serve for breakfast.

I don't mean to poo-poo it too much. I love this kind of food for lunch and dinner. But it starts my day off all wrong having it for breakfast.

My wife totally didn't get it, but it all came to a head one morning when we were out vacationing at the sea side and woke up with some friends to go find some breakfast. I'd try to go along and eat whatever we could scrounge up but after 14 days of cold fish and soup for breakfast I was past accommodating. We kept driving past perfectly open bakeries or places that might serve milder food stuffs and landed at pretty much the 180 degree polar opposite of a full-English, a pork-intestine soup (and some other misc pork parts) restaurant. [1]

Normally, I find this soup perfectly fine. But as a heavy lunch or dinner foodstuff. Not a breakfast thing - ever.

I lost it, I sat there in stoic fuming silence while everybody else ate their fill. My wife wondering why I wasn't eating anything -- leaving my entire meal untouched. We left, and I gave her an ear full until we stopped at a bakery where I got myself some decent pastries and some very so-so coffee. (reversing roles, my wife frequently has a similar food crisis in various countries we've visited and we've spent hours hunting down something she'll eat. Turns out there really are Chinese restaurants everywhere and that's "close enough" to get her through the day.)

When we finally made it back home to the States, I gorged myself at diners and IHOPs and all day breakfast places for 3 or 4 days until I felt like I was truly back in a civilized land.

1 - See #3 Sundaeguk http://travel.cnn.com/seoul/eat/5-korean-ways-eat-pig-231893

gohrt3• 13 years ago

What you are actually saying is that you like the food you are accustomed to eating, and you doused your observation in a coating of provincial chauvinism.

bane4• 13 years ago

I cannot deny your statement -- it's definitely, absolutely true.

When I'm overseas for a long time, there are 3 things that I crave down to my bones. I guess those are the three things that are core to my being as an American. I'm not ashamed to admit this either after working with many expats in the States who practically go insane trying to find even simple tastes from home to center themselves.

a) the kind of breakfast that's common to the English speaking world (I don't want to say Western, because breakfasts on the European mainland aren't it). In a pinch some fried eggs and a pastry of some kind with some coffee will do.

b) Tex-Mex food. Taco Bell in particular (if you can charitably call that Tex-Mex). I've stood in line for 2 hours and paid $5 a taco once at an overseas Taco Bell I needed it so bad.

But really, finding even passable Tex-Mex outside of the U.S. is frustratingly hard. I've even eaten "Mexican" meat pies in Australia I was so desperate for the taste. They did not satisfy.

c) Any kind of African-American music...which is odd since I don't normally like most of it, but hearing it on the radio after a long time away from home is the sweetest sound I've ever heard and has symbolically told me that yes, I'm really finally home.

One time, after a very extended stay in Germany, when I could practically feel the sausage and cold cuts oozing from my pores I was thinking about tossing it in and going home until I came across a Soul Food restaurant in Vilsek [1]. I sat down, ordered some fried catfish! , sweet ice tea, collard greens and cornbread and sat there for three hours listening to background jazz music. For those three hours I was absolutely transported into the symbolic heart of Americana and left there absolutely renewed and psychically refreshed. I think the staff there knew what I was going through and came and kept the sweet tea filled over some light conversation.

I don't normally like any of those foods or jazz but sitting there completely recentered me mentally and I went back to my job for the next few weeks and finished it without problem.

1 - http://www.angelossoulfood-vilseck.com/

001sky• 13 years ago

This Article seems to ignore the (historical) fact that America is just following the footsteps of the common breakfast in all other English speaking countries (eg, UK, Ireland, Australia, etc). Which is odd....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_breakfast

bryanlarsen• 13 years ago

Isn't the standard American breakfast a bowl of Corn Flakes? Breakfast cereal is perhaps the most heavily marketed of all grocery store foods.

dbbolton• 13 years ago

If I'm not mistaken, bacon was actually a popular breakfast food long before this marketing campaign took place, and even before the US existed.

snowwrestler• 13 years ago

He was the guy who was hired by the Aluminum Company of America to use the American Dental Association to convince people that water flouridation was safe and healthy to the public.

This shows the downside of Wikipedia. The "source" for this claim is a conspiracy-nut anti-fluoride essay in the Rothbard-Rockwell Report. Yet it's passed by Wikipedia--and then this article--as a fact.

vezzy-fnord• 13 years ago

I highly recommend everyone here read Edward L. Bernays' seminal 1928 work titled Propaganda.

It is absolutely key to understanding how the modern world works, and it has influenced countless propagandists since then, including Joseph Goebbels.

rottyguy• 13 years ago

Swine-dled!

How ‘Bacon and Eggs’ Became the American Breakfast

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