Why Do People Think It’s Weird When You Eat Breakfast?
Adeline loves eating, a lot and often, both at home and out. Usually that goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. In the Sunday Roast series, she shares her observations. This time: breakfast.
I eat breakfast and people think that’s weird. Now you may be thinking: why are you making such a fuss, I eat breakfast too. But I mean that I eat breakfast on a chair, at a set table, with coffee I brewed myself, a slice of toast and an egg boiled for twelve minutes, which is just short of hard-boiled if you put it in cold water from the start. That’s how I eat breakfast. Without having children I need to teach to eat breakfast.
Unable to Swallow a Bite
Now, once (somewhere before corona when everyone still had somewhere to go) I had a conversation with a woman, which went roughly like this. Woman: ‘Do you eat breakfast?’ Me: ‘Yes, I eat breakfast.’ Woman: ‘But really at a table and everything…’ Me: ‘Uuuh, yes.’ Woman: ‘What do you eat, then?’ Me, a little taken aback: ‘Well, sometimes yoghurt with granola and a banana, but sometimes also a slice of bread with a boiled egg.’ Woman: ‘A slice of brea—d?’ Me: ‘Yes.’ Woman: ‘Well, I never do that, I can’t get a bite down my throat in the morning and I certainly don’t have time to sit down.’
Less Sleep
Besides feeling very private being questioned about my breakfast like that, I sensed so much judgment in that last sentence that I simply had to recover for a moment. Apparently it was outrageous that I ate something before my working day, because heaven forbid you were already able to swallow something edible by then. But it was even stranger that I did it sitting down, in my kitchen, at a table, while holding a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. It almost felt as if I had time to spare. Which isn’t the case; I simply get up half an hour earlier to leisurely shovel down my granola and drink coffee. I’m willing to sacrifice less sleep or less of the evening before for that—it just depends on which order you look at it in.
It’s Contagious
I also have the feeling that not eating breakfast is something that mainly prevails among women. It’s as contagious as the plague. If one of them only eats at work, you can bet your bottom dollar that within a week the second one will also start having breakfast at a desk. You often hear them say around eleven: oh shit, I haven’t eaten a bite yet. I dare say this is done with some pride, because within a nanosecond you hear a story about how they forgot to eat until well into the afternoon, and before you know it the conversation is about how fasting is good for you and everyone should stop eating breakfast. By that time I’m already lying in front of the fridge at the editorial office with hunger pangs. It probably sounds as though I’m not a woman myself, but I am. A breakfast eater. Which I think is an endangered species.
Hell
When I’m alone, I sometimes cancel breakfast too. I grab a banana to take with me (read here about how it still haunts me), stop for coffee on the way, and boiling an egg isn’t happening. I think that’s hell. I’m all for an elaborate breakfast.
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