Broccoli For Breakfast

Breakfast seems to be getting a lot of attention lately. Does anyone else keep hearing about it?

Jerry Seinfeld took a crack at the topic with his new movie about Pop-Tarts. "Unfrosted" examines the cutthroat worlds of two breakfast cereal giants in the 1960s through a comedic lens. But, when you start looking into where our modern version of the day's first meal came from, it's truly bizarre. So bizarre, in fact, that a comedy film might just be the only way to do it justice.

Start with cereal. Corn Flakes. They were originally invented by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg to dissuade American consumers from engaging in sin.

"I am not after the business,” he is quoted as saying. “I am after the reform.”

And then there's the issue of breakfast as "the most important meal of the day." Says who?

Says Kellogg. The popular phrase stems from a marketing slogan from around the same time cereal was beginning its dynasty as an American breakfast table standard.

We recently saw yet another attempt by the Kellogg machine to further control your meal planning with its failed campaign to push cereal as an affordable dinner option for families dealing with rising food costs.

Healthy and cheap!

If breakfast truly is the most important meal of the day, common sense would have you at least rethink your menu choices. A bowl of processed grains? Maybe a piece of buttered toast on the side?

X/Fangs.Up

In an interview I heard a while back, comedian Zarna Garg talked about feeding her kids steamed broccoli every day before school. Brainfood, I believe was her reasoning.

An initial reaction? That sounds insane! Eating anything green before noon is a wild thought. Breakfast is beige. Period. Maybe sometimes a little yellow thrown in for egg yokes, sure. Sugar? Yes. Vegetables? No way. C'mon. This is America after all!

But, alas, we've all been fooled by the world of corporate marketing.

In fact, up until the late 19th century, before Big Cereal and Big Bacon came around, breakfast was up to whatever you were feeling. Usually, whatever you had left over from the night before.

So, of course Zarna Garg is right. A bowl of broccoli is a better choice than a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Can you dig it? Can your kids dig it?

Well, that's the real challenge now. We're probably going to need a century of clever ad campaigns, a boardroom of broccoli lobbyists, a cartoon mascot, and maybe then we can sell this one.

But, really. Trust your common sense. Eat right. All day long.

—John