“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” There’s no doubt that you’ve heard this phrase countless times in your life. You were probably told this phrase as a child and it’s so ingrained in your brain that you don’t even question it anymore. After all it’s just one of those things that seems true: a good hearty breakfast can help set you up for the rest of your day. Not only does breakfast give you a chance to start your day by providing your body with essential nutrients and vitamins it’s also a playground for trying out fun recipes (like this breakfast burrito).
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
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 Jeff Nippard | 2018-06-11 21:17:53 |  318,380 Views |
Is BREAKFAST the Most Important Meal of the Day? (What Science Says)
With these things in mind it would seem that breakfast really is the most important meal. But what if you were told that this statement was actually the result of business plans? There is more to the invention of this slogan than how marketing actually made breakfast as important as it is today.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries breakfast was primarily associated with the idea of filling your body with everything it needed to function smoothly. According to The Guardian this was promoted by prosperous cereal magnates like John Harvey Kellogg (yes that Kellogg) a super-strict religious moralist who fervently believed that eating the “right” foods could help ward off temptation and impurity. Conveniently Kellogg’s own Cornflake cereal served as the perfect food for this purpose as it was light fairly bland and generally inoffensive.
Once the discovery of vitamins hit the market breakfast cereal advertisers continued to use moralistic marketing ploys to convince working-class mothers to buy nutrient-dense cereals for their children. This only cemented breakfast’s position as the most important meal in the cultural eyes as it was seen as a quick and easy source of essential vitamins. Of course breakfast isn’t the only meal where children get nutrients — just look at why schools serve lunch with milk instead of water — but breakfast cereal brands’ marketing leaned on the guilt/shame angle to persuade busy mothers to feed their children a healthy breakfast.
