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