Angela Mollard: The humble breakfast has made a reappearance in my meal rotation
Sorry Joanna Lumley – when it comes to finding the solution to shed a few unwanted kilos, skipping brekky is a habit you can keep, writes Angela Mollard.
First it was a guy I worked with; a former newsreader.
He’d been widowed and was getting remarried.
Wanted to lose a few kilos.
Then a mate.
She claimed it was the route to weight loss and mental clarity.
When Joanna Lumley got on board, effectively querying why anyone would awaken the sleeping beast that is appetite, I took it seriously.
Finally, my darling 80-year-old Mum, who is very much her own woman and wouldn’t be sucked into a silly trend, jumped on the bandwagon.
So I joined them. I ditched breakfast, swapping out my beloved Bircher muesli and the quotidian wonderment of a perfect poached egg and replaced it with fresh air and a cupful of sanctimony.
For the past few years I have been a reluctant intermittent faster, turning down all iterations of breakfast even though it killed me.
Porridge was persona non grata, bacon and eggs were devil’s spawn and the croissants which I knew were nutritionally useless but made me feel Parisian and whimsical, sat untouched in the bakery.
Yet while so many embraced a reduced eating window, some boasting they’ve got it down to just six hours, I’ve felt mutinous indignation.
If you’re going to ban a meal, wouldn’t you dispense with boring old lunch with its dreary carousel of soup, salad and sandwich?
Or dinner which is a palaver at the wrong end of the day?
Well friends, I bring exciting news from the culinary frontline.
Breakfast is back!
I can’t furnish you with statistics or spurious research funded by one of those cereal companies which cannibalised breakfast and gave it a bad name, but I can feel it in my (gratefully renourished) bones.
The first inkling came months ago when leading exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist Dr Stacy Sims said women, particularly, needed breakfast to balance their hormones and support morning exercise.
Fasting, she said, could lead to the loss of lean muscle mass and provoke a stress response which could impact you all day.
At least have half a banana before exercising, she advised.
A proper breakfast with oats and protein was even better.
Then British dietitian Dr Emily Leeming made a smart point.
“If you have the means, would you ever send a child to school without breakfast?” she queried.
“Why does that change as adults? We want to have our energy levels high and sustained.”
I don’t doubt intermittent fasting is a good thing – clearly our hunter-gatherer forbears didn’t shovel down three meals and multiple snacks a day – but why did beautiful breakfast have to become the pariah?
As Dr Leeming points out, most breakfast deniers use coffee as a crutch in the morning and crash around 4pm.
Or, like me, they find themselves having two – OK, eight – squares of chocolate in the evenings because they’re starving.
Still, it seemed breakfast might just be something for the ladies until that bastion of male chest-puffery, The Wall St Journal, dared to question the wisdom of skipping breakfast.
The tech bros must’ve had a meltdown and the brokers would’ve feared their Ozempic and Mounjaro stocks would plummet, but the Journal pointed out the obvious: that breakfast provides vital fibre and nutrients including vitamin D, A, iron and folate and that it potentially reduces late-night overeating.
Perhaps we needed to switch our focus from rigid rules around timing, to the quality and content of meals.
What eggscellent news because brekky is the best and, as I suspected all along, skipping it didn’t so much burn more calories as defer them.
I certainly lost no weight.
What a joy to reprise my Bircher, stirring oats, chia seeds and coconut with milk and popping it in the fridge to soak overnight before being ceremonially stirred with grated apple, raisins, nuts and seeds.
How glorious to break eggs and scramble them with parsley and parmesan before piling onto a slice of sourdough.
Melon, berries, sardines, omelettes and the occasional cheeky chorizo or pancake has also reappeared, as has the Vegemite which has been lovelessly languishing at the back of the pantry.
As the late writer A. A. Gill once noted of the celebrated meal: “Breakfast is everything. The beginning, the first thing. It is the mouthful that is the commitment to the new day, a continuing life.”
Fellow scribe Bill Bryson was also a fan, noting in his book Home that people once got more of their calories at breakfast and midday whereas now those intakes are reversed.
I love that breakfast is the great leveller. It’s mostly eaten at home, can be assembled cheaply and sounds lovely in so many languages.
Le Petit Dejeuner makes coffee and a croissant sound flirtatious while the global permutations of breakfast are equally seductive: Japanese miso and grilled fish; crusty Greek bread and honey; waffles and berries.
And best of all, the Full English which I am demolishing as I hike Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England.
Who else would conjure a plateful of eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, beans and that divisive black pudding?
Sorry, Ms Lumley – the beast is awakened.
Ange’s A-List
Jean Genie
Praise be, the straight jean is back and paired with a blazer as seen on Julia Roberts and Amanda Seyfried in Venice this week.
I loved the freshness of the barrel-leg silhouette of the last year but they’re hard to make work with tops and shoes. Sense has returned.
Irish charm
CMAT, otherwise known as the Irish singer songwriter Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, has just come to my attention and her music is gorgeous. She was encouraged by Charli XCX and her hit, Take A Sexy Picture of Me, is a cracker.
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Originally published as Angela Mollard: The humble breakfast has made a reappearance in my meal rotation
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