The History of the American Breakfast

A lot of what we think of as a "classic" American breakfast is younger — and more manufactured — than it feels.

Eggs have been a breakfast staple for a long time, largely because fresh eggs were simply available first thing in the morning. Their now-famous pairing with bacon, though, is a 20th-century invention. In the 1920s, most Americans ate light breakfasts — coffee, maybe toast. A public relations campaign for the bacon industry changed that, enlisting doctors to publicly recommend a "hearty breakfast" of bacon and eggs. It worked, and the pairing stuck for a century.

Cereal has a similar backstory. It didn't exist before the 19th century, and it also started out as a doctor-recommended health food. By the 1910s, companies were rolling out puffed wheat and rice cereals, and by the mid-20th century, mascots and sugar had turned cereal into the default breakfast for American kids.

It's a good reminder that "traditional" breakfast is often just whatever a good ad campaign made popular a hundred years ago. We like to think our own menu splits the difference — familiar plates like French toast and eggs, alongside a Turkish breakfast table that never needed a marketing campaign to become a tradition.

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