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Breakfast has almost religious overtones

Posted by nations habits Sunday, November 7, 2010
Breakfast has almost religious overtones
  
Our word for the first meal of the day, "breakfast," has almost religious overtones, as if the hours in which we sleep are a purposeful abstention from sustenance. We get this word from the English -- just as we get from them many of our breakfast habits and dishes. And, since both the US and England have unusually elaborate ideas of what constitutes an appropriate culinary opener to the day, it is not surprising that we share a loaded name for the meal.

Almost uniformly in other countries, the word for breakfast is not so portentous. In some languages, it barely rates meal status. The German frühstück is, literally, an "early bite." In France and Italy, petit dejeuner and prima colazione are both just a bridge to the midday meal -- a "little" or a "first" lunch. The Dutch ontbijt can mean either breakfast or a snack. And often, the idea is pared down to its bare minimum -- coffee -- as in the Portuguese cafe da manhã, or "morning coffee." In the end, whether it is a large or a small meal, one thing is expected from breakfast: it should get you going. This is usually done by combining a rousing stimulant with strengthening substance, in varying proportions that are largely cultural. In France, for example, the coffee is the main thing. In Asian countries most people eat the same sorts of foods for breakfast that they would eat for any other meal. And in America, a great deal of work has gone into searching for just exactly the right foods for the morning hours, quite apart from any other time of day.
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