Why can breakfast be sweet but not other meals?

[AnneLovesGilbert]

Fruit salad, pancakes, waffles etc all perfectly acceptable for breakfast. But not normal for lunch or dinner. The porridge for supper thread the other day, I’m also a fan, was interesting but I think it’s the exception and it was mostly for young children.

Tonight we had apple crumble and yogurt for supper as half the family is ill and we had loads of apples. It was substantial, warm, several food groups, not bad.

Who came up with the rules?

The Greeks have a gorgeous Feta cheese and honey pie that you eat as a main. But yes, I find the rules funny too. I love salad, but couldn't eat one before 12noon for a million quid. And a sweet dinner is strictly for illness or emergencies! I'm just thinking what a treat Stilton is on those sweet Hovis biscuits at Christmas time!

Completely agree!
Why do people eat cereal for breakfast?
Really unhealthy.

I find it interesting how the French can have a small sweet breakfast such as a croissant and coffee or a pastry and coffee and then avoid snacking until lunch. They much have a lot more self control or maybe much better insulin control from lower carb the rest of the day.

I've seen a lot of "What I eat in a day as a French person..." videos on YouTube, and they apparently mostly save pastries for the weekend. During the week, they're more likely to have a bit of good quality baguette with real butter.
They also have much more social pressure to remain slim and it would be completely normal for your workmates, for instance, to comment that you've gained weight!

I can't stand a sweet breakfast. I love an omelette or scrambled eggs, or if there's leftovers from dinner I reheat that .... chilli, curry, noodles, fish pie. Anything really!

The breakfasts you described OP, would be "treat" breakfasts for us, certainly not every day breakfast. Fruit salad is ok but I would add Greek yogurt to provide protein. Porridge is different because its slow release energy and can lower cholesterol.

Having sweet stuff alone as a main meal will just lead to sugar spike then crash.

Fruit salad is unhealthy ? I have heard everything now.

Sweet breakfast are quite a western thing I think - in much of the world breakfast isn't sweet.
Cereal was developed for health reasonsbut I guess people added sugar to make it taste better:
Kellogg was a member of the church, which promoted wellness and was big on good digestion at a time when many breakfasts involved meat and fried potatoes. He was also extremely worried about masturbation, believing it could lead to a bizarre list of problems from unattractiveness to insanity. He thought a bland diet could help tackle the twin national crises of indigestion and masturbation.

"why is a full English olay for breakfast but a roast not"

I suppose it's because you can put a full English together in about half an hour but to have a roast dinner for breakfast you'd have to be up at 3am peeling spuds.

I do a manual job and need a substantial breakfast with protein, a decent lunch and a big wallop of dinner. I guess the 'rules' around food developed when most people got up very early and worked long, hard, physical days. Nobody was doing that on a cruffin.

I’m now really curious about how he thought a bland diet could stop masturbation!

I love pastries and fruit for breakfast. Also pancakes. I don’t think either are inherently unhealthy. I guess they could be very sweet or oily ones or if covered in syrups.

There are three ingredients in my pancakes and they are eggs, flour and milk and they are cooked in butter and topped with fruit, cinnamon, sometimes sugar if the fruit is tart but I can’t see much else that would be considered unhealthy.

I made pastries yesterday for this morning and they are puff pastry, apples and an apricot jam glaze. I get that a bit of sugar or jam isn’t super ideal but it’s surely comparable to the sweet elements of other meals.

Lunchtime in France is 12pm not 1 or 1:30 as it often is in Southern England. Also lunch is a substantial meal with at least 2 courses- you would want to be hungry for that. Incidentally I can get to lunchtime in the UK in my desk job on a coffee and a bannana.

And considering how much breakfast cereal a typical teenage boy eats, it doesn't seem to have worked very well!

The benefit of living on your own is that there are no rules.

Any food, any time, anywhere.

(as long as it isn’t in paw reach for my cat!)

There is literally nothing unhealthy whatsoever about pancakes, waffles or fruit salad. Why does every food thread always have posters who shame normal, highly nutritious food?

That’s interesting. I was brought up in Scotland and we would often have ‘soup and a pudding’ in winter. It would be a hearty soup like broth or potato soup with bread and a proper pudding like crumble or apple tart. I still do it sometimes. Only time I have a proper pudding now.

It can’t imo. I really don’t have a sweet tooth and struggle with breakfast. I rotate turkey rashers, eggs, beans really. Occasionally I’ll have Greek yoghurt with protein powder but it’s not my favourite, it’s just convenient.

We don’t tend to have them very often but if you go out for breakfast or brunch no one bats an eyelid if you have pancakes with fruit while it would be seen as odd to have that for lunch. It’s just customs I suppose. But I always wonder how they started. I’m a huge fan of savoury breakfast type dishes for dinner.

Not where I’m from. Fruit in dumplings, curd cheese with vanilla extract in pancakes fried in a caramelised syrup. It’s a treat dinner, so not every week type thing but dinner nonetheless.

There’s always one 🙄🤣

Oh yes we do this too - when I am using up the tonnes of cooking apples we get from our tree to make crumble or Eve's pudding. Love a soup and pudding dinner.

Never been into sweet things generally. But it's odd as you say OP that sugary breakfasts are fairly normalised but you would not see that for dinner usually.

I commonly have leftovers for breakfast. Although i stopped doing that at work when my colleagues took the piss because I brought spagetti bolognese for breakfast one day.

growing up we lived for a while with my Gps. My grandmother had Russian parents and we would often have borscht for breakfast. Yum.

I often make 'breakfast for dinner' once a week but it does tend to be savoury also.

I haven't had cereal for breakfast for decades as it just doesn't fill me up - only exception is sometimes porridge but even then I will generally also have a boiled egg. My breakfasts are either cheese on toast, avocado on toast, scrambled eggs (sometimes with tomatoes or mushrooms if spare ones in the veg drawer). If I am going to work I'll make either a egg mayo or avocado and egg sandwich to eat when I get there. If I'm on my own I might have a sweet-ish lunch or dinner (banana on toast) or rice pudding. The 'rules' are just made-up though. I remember being in Japan years ago with work and loving rice/salmon/broth for breakfast but the older colleague I was with was aghast there was no cereal and toast/jam available.

I hear ya.

The other day I ate 4 jam doughnuts for dinner 😂 I'm not proud of it, but it happened.