The most effective conspiracies are the ones whose
very existence we never suspect. Like the dastardly global breakfast plot.
See, it was complete news to you. There you were,
munching contentedly on your morning toast and marmalade, blissfully unaware of
the ugly truth. That meal you are now eating is a complete waste of time and
money, a bad habit forced upon humanity by centuries of evil propaganda disseminated
by the food industry.
It’s drummed into us from the day we are born –
“breakfast is the most important meal of the day”.
What a load of rubbish. I have not eaten a single
breakfast since the turn of the century at least, and I am still alive. Albeit
in the dreary, empty and angst-filled way
that so many of us are nowadays, but still. I am proof that skipping breakfast
does not inevitably lead to incessant yawning and terminal mid-morning coma. I
obtain all my essential morning nutrients from a cup of coffee. OK, more often
two or three cups.
The breakfast-Nazis have convinced the world that the
meal is an institution like the family or the church, as essential to life as
breathing or sleeping or checking your e-mails.
Google “breakfast” and you get an endless list of
bed & breakfast establishments from Shanghai to Shoshanguve. It’s as if the
two concepts are inseparable. Book into one of these places and say you just
want the bed, no breakfast thanks, and an awkward silence descends. The owner
freezes, aghast. As soon as you are out the room she will call the police and
report you as a likely suicide-bomber.
The media perpetuate the myth with their “breakfast”
shows, as if anyone who watches TV or listens to the radio in the morning
without polishing off a plate of bacon and eggs at the same time must be from
another planet.
How did this happen? It’s corporate greed, of
course. Walk down the cereal aisle in any supermarket and the evidence is
clear: miles and miles of Cornflakes and WeetBix and Sugar Pops and All Bran
boxes stretching from floor to ceiling. A great deal of money is riding on the fact
that we all believe our survival depends on eating breakfast.
How can it possibly be healthy or even slightly
pleasant to gobble down great gobs of carbohydrates and complex proteins as
soon as you wake up, while your digestive system is still in repose?
Until now, no one has had the courage to stand up
and say “enough”. It’s likely that there are other closet anti-breakfast
believers out there; but they are probably terrified of revealing themselves lest they
receive the dreaded 8am knock on the door from men in white chef’s coats who
will force-feed them stodgy porridge, indigestible muesli, rubbery eggs, fatty
sausages, tiers of soggy toast, and greasy chips slathered with congealed
ketchup.
The very name “breakfast” is a triumph of misleading
PR. We see it and think, “Oh, we have to eat this because we’ve been fasting.”
For goodness sake. Going 12 hours without food since dinner the night before is
not a fast. A fast is when you spend 40 days and nights in the wilderness
without letting even a drop of water cross your lips until you hallucinate
wildly and have conversations with an imaginary being in the sky.
The food multinationals have generously pumped their
dollars into the medical fraternity, so we now have nutritionists solemnly
opining that a failure to eat breakfast will almost certainly lead to obesity,
among other dire consequences. The reasoning goes that if you don’t eat
breakfast, then by 10am you’ll be starving and will gorge on sweets from the
vending machine. It’s like saying you should smoke a cigarette first thing in
the morning, otherwise you’ll be shooting up heroin before lunch.
Lunch. Now there’s another totally unnecessary meal.
But let’s leave that for another day.
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