Breakfast of Champions

As I was frying up some eggs this morning it occurred to me, not for the first time, how odd some of our food conventions are. Why is that some foods are 'breakfast foods'? And why are there other foods (and drinks) that get you strange looks if you want them for breakfast?

At first I thought maybe certain foods were just better for starting your day? But breakfast foods certainly aren't just healthy foods. Bacon, eggs, sausage and bologna are all greasy as hell. Other choices like pancakes or waffles tend to be doused in butter or maple syrup. Hell the majority of breakfast cereals are loaded with sugar. It does not seem like it's a health thing.

Now most breakfast foods can be eaten at other times of day without earning you any funny looks. People will often have some sort of eggs, hashbrown and meat combination for their supper. If you try to have a hamburger and coke for breakfast however, be prepared for some funny looks.

And it's not like we have the breakfast foods marked out for the first meal of the day either. If you get up sometime after 11 AM, it's perfectly all right to have any type of food stuff. You can have your eggs if you want but nobody will give you a second look if you decide you'd like to have some mac and cheese or a plate of french fries.

As near as I can figure what we have is just an abritrary convention that between the hours of 6 AM and 11 AM only certain foods are acceptable to eat. I remember going to mealhall back in the early years of university when we used to have a 'breakfast crew' (mealhall's best food was served at breakfast so we'd often go to bed at 4 or 5, get up at 7:45, go to breakfast and then sleep till noon or later). A few of us would sometimes get ice cream just for the hell of it (a practice we did more often once you realized it bugged the hell out of some people :P).

Whatever reason we have our food convention, it's one I shall be making strides to break. I leave for work about 10:15 5 days a week and there's only so many 'breakfast' things I can make in the 15 minutes or so I allot for food preperation.