We’ve all heard the expression before that ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’. But not many people know where this saying actually comes from. It was first coined in 1917 by Lenna Cooper, a prominent American dietitian who used it in a magazine article published for a sanatorium. The phrase might have simply faded away into obscurity had the sanatorium not been run by future cereal king, Dr John Harvey Kellogg. Spotting an opportunity, he decided to ‘adopt’ the slogan and use it in a marketing campaign to promote his breakfast cereal. The rest, of course, is history. More than a century later, the phrase is still being used to sell breakfast by food marketing execs and by parents, who are just trying to get their children to eat something in the morning. Though, in reality, there is no meal importance podium where breakfast sits sky high above all other meals. It’s not like if you’ve ‘done breakfast’, anything goes with lunch and dinner. Clearly, all meals in your diet are important and will impact your health, even if evidence shows that eating breakfast is nutritionally important. The question is what kind of breakfast should you eat that will help you stay healthy? Competing cereal manufacturers are still trying to convince us that their latest bowlful is the answer. Which is why I read with interest about the three new breakfast cereals launched by Nestle.
