This was confirmed when I discovered two empty bags of corn chips near the bin. Who in their right mind has nachos for breakfast? Also, who eats that much food?
From the size of the devastation in the kitchen, it was clear he had made enough nachos for a school camp dinner. I was outraged.
When the young man arrived home from school, I accosted him. “Buddy, you can’t make nachos for breakfast’ He answered, ‘Why’, I said because. Nachos aren’t breakfast food”. He replied, ‘Why?’. I didn’t have an answer for this.
As sure as I was in my anti-breakfast-nachos convictions, I couldn’t think why it was not okay. My whole life, I have known in my heart that you can’t have nachos for breakfast, but I never thought about why exactly. He went on to point out that his nachos feature protein, vegetables and corn.
Surely, it’s the perfect food for a growing boy. “But what about the chips, son’, I return, ‘you can’t have chips for breakfast”. “Why?” he counters again. “Because they’re not good for you”. He points at a box of fancy cereal in the cardboard. “Can I have those for breakfast?’. “Of course”, I answer. “Are they healthy?”. He’s got me. They are not.
In fact, they are 40 per cent sugar. I tell him that he can’t have nachos for breakfast because I say so and to clean up the kitchen.
This got me thinking: why are some foods breakfast food and others not? Why is a burger not when a sausage muffin is? Why is mince on toast okay when a pizza is out of the question?
As it turns out, the most ‘breakfast’ of foods, bacon and eggs, is only on the menu due to a 1920s American marketing campaign run by Edward Bernays, the nephew of the famous Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
Before then, in the States, they mainly had bread rolls for breakfast. Bernays, who was an early developer of the use of propaganda to sell products, was hired by a meat company to boost bacon sales.
To do this, he massaged some highly sketchy research and then paid to have it published in as many newspapers as he could nationwide, positioning bacon and eggs as the ideal breakfast choice.
It took off and soon spread across the Western world. If he had been hired by Big Nacho, today we might be thinking it’s normal to have a big plate of that in the morning before work.
Annoyingly, my research is starting to prove my son correct. Other obvious breakfast choices have strange origins, too.
Breakfast Cereal was invented by brothers Dr John Harvey and Will Keith Kellogg as a health food in the late 19th century.
It was first served in their punishing health Sanatoriums to invalids suffering from flatulence and indigestion. It was also used to dampen the desires of others caught in the act of self-pleasure.
Dr John believed that to be healthy, foods needed to be joyless. This early cereal was grim and tasteless, and everyone hated it.
One day, brother Will added sugar and salt to the cornflakes, and everyone loved it. John was furious, and even though they both lived into their 90s, the brothers never spoke again.
Will Kellogg left and formed his own company, taking the sweet, yummy version of their product to market, and the rest is history.
So, it would seem that what we consider breakfast isn’t based on logic. It’s based on marketing and historical norms.
In India, breakfast isn’t much different from other meals; in Japan, they have rice and fish, and the Maasai people of Kenya sometimes start the day with a hot cup of cow’s blood.
My son’s morning monster nachos feast has really challenged my assumptions about breakfasts, and for that, I thank him.
It would be good, however, if he cleaned up his disgusting kitchen-wide mess just once in his goddamn life.
