Breakfast Around The World

Breakfast Around The World: The first meal of the day ranges from fermented beans in Japan to fava bean stew in Egypt, noodle soup in Vietnam and sweet sprinkles on bread in the Netherlands. Many habits we think of as ancient are surprisingly recent, shaped by industrial work schedules, religious health reformers, colonial trade and 20th century advertising.

Thomas Aquinas: The medieval theologian listed eating too early, 'praepropere,' as one of the ways to commit gluttony. In much of medieval Europe a morning meal was considered fit mainly for laborers, children, the sick and the elderly.

Full English Breakfast: The fry-up began as a showcase of country house hospitality before spreading to the working class in the industrial era. W. Somerset Maugham quipped that to eat well in England, you should have breakfast three times a day.

Sylvester Graham: The 1830s Presbyterian minister preached that bland, meat-free food would curb lust and disease. His coarse 'graham flour' became the ancestor of the graham cracker and pushed America toward grain-based breakfasts.

John Harvey Kellogg: At his Battle Creek Sanitarium, Kellogg and his brother Will Keith created flaked cereal in 1894 after accidentally leaving cooked wheat out. Will wanted to add sugar; John refused, and the brothers' feud split the company.

Edward Bernays: Hired by Beech-Nut in the 1920s to sell more bacon, the father of public relations got thousands of doctors to endorse a hearty breakfast. Newspapers reported it as health advice, and bacon and eggs became America's standard breakfast.

Maximilian Bircher-Benner: The Swiss doctor created muesli around 1900 for patients at his Zurich sanatorium, inspired by a dish served on an Alpine hike. He originally served it as a small raw-food starter, not a breakfast.

August Zang: The croissant isn't originally French. Austrian officer August Zang opened a Viennese bakery in Paris around 1838, selling the crescent-shaped kipferl that French bakers transformed into the croissant. The legend that it celebrated a victory over the Ottomans is likely a myth.

Chocolatería San Ginés: Open in Madrid since 1894, this café serves churros with thick hot chocolate around the clock, feeding both early commuters and partygoers heading home at dawn.

Hagelslag: The Dutch eat millions of slices of buttered bread topped with chocolate sprinkles every year. Venz is credited with launching chocolate hagelslag in 1936, and it is perfectly normal for adults to eat it for breakfast.

Brunost: Norway's caramel-colored brown cheese, said to have been perfected by dairymaid Anne Hov in 1863, is shaved onto bread every morning. In 2013 a truck carrying 27 tons of it caught fire in a tunnel and burned for days.

Vegemite: Chemist Cyril Callister created the spread from leftover brewer's yeast in 1922. It sold so poorly that it was briefly renamed Parwill, a jab at rival Marmite, before becoming Australia's toast staple.

Kahvaltı: The Turkish word for breakfast literally means 'below coffee,' the meal you eat before your coffee. A traditional spread can include olives, cheeses, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggs, honey, kaymak and simit.

Ful Medames: Egypt's breakfast of fava beans is traditionally slow cooked overnight in a narrow pot called a qidra. Fava beans have been part of Egyptian diets since the time of the pharaohs.

Shakshuka: Eggs poached in spiced tomato sauce came from North Africa and became an Israeli breakfast icon thanks to Tunisian and Libyan Jewish immigrants, popularized by Jaffa's Dr Shakshuka restaurant.

Fir-fir: In Ethiopia and Eritrea, yesterday's injera flatbread is torn up and soaked in spiced butter and berbere sauce for breakfast, a waste-nothing meal eaten, of course, with more injera.

Idli: South India's steamed rice and lentil cakes may have roots in Indonesia. Food historian K.T. Achaya suggested cooks of Indonesian Hindu kings brought the fermenting and steaming technique around 800 to 1200 CE.

Youtiao: China's fried dough sticks are said to protest Qin Hui, a 12th century official blamed for the death of general Yue Fei. In Cantonese they are still called 'oil-fried devil,' two twisted strands for Qin Hui and his wife.

Congee: Rice porridge has been eaten across China for thousands of years and is still the go-to meal for the sick. In some families, eating a bowl of Laba congee is a winter festival tradition dating back centuries.

Natto: Legend credits samurai Minamoto no Yoshiie with discovering the sticky fermented soybeans when beans packed in straw for his horses fermented in the 11th century. Natto still divides Japan, beloved in the east and often disliked in the west.

Phở: Vietnam's famous noodle soup is a breakfast first. It took shape around Hanoi and Nam Định in the early 20th century, with some historians seeing influence from the French beef stew pot au feu.

Ya Kun Kaya Toast: Hainanese immigrant Loi Ah Koon opened a coffee stall in Singapore in 1944. His toast with coconut egg jam, soft-boiled eggs and kopi became a national breakfast ritual.

Nasi Lemak: Malaysia's coconut rice with sambal, anchovies, peanuts and egg began as a farmers' breakfast packed in banana leaves. It is now considered the country's unofficial national dish, eaten at any hour.

Harina P.A.N.: For centuries making arepas meant hours of soaking and grinding corn. Engineer Luis Caballero Mejías developed precooked corn flour, launched by Empresas Polar in 1960, turning Venezuela's daily breakfast into a minutes-long job.

Gallo Pinto: Costa Rica and Nicaragua both claim this rice and beans breakfast as their own. The rivalry has played out in record-setting attempts to cook the world's biggest pot of it.