This week I’m going to spend a minute talking about the typical American breakfast, namely toast, bagels, muffins, waffles, pancakes, breakfast cereal, biscuits, and bread, and then I’m going to talk about what else we can eat for breakfast. The typical American basically consists of just white flour and sugar. It’s all stripped carb. I put “cereal” in quotes because the word cereal really means grain (like oatmeal, millet, kasha, bulgur wheat), and not boxes of sweetened, dyed, highly processed products of limited nutritional value.

Something I’ve noticed is that even when friends, colleagues and acquaintances have switched out all or most of the stripped carb from their diet, and have rid their kitchens of that list of typical American breakfast foods above (at least most of the time), a lot of people are still strongly influenced by the list. 

So here’s the thing — you don’t have to stick to that list. You don’t have to eat pancakes and bagels. Instead, you can eat leftover salmon, carrots & hummus, slices of avocado or cheese on a bed of arugula or in a wrap. You could heat up a bowl of lentil soup, crack an egg into a small bowl with a scoop of pesto and bake it in the toaster oven for 10 minutes. Some canned fish and leftover roasted veggies. Or you might try cooking a sweet potato in the microwave and adding a generous spoonful of peanut butter. 

I’m not against buying whole wheat versions of processed products. That counts as a step in the right direction, for sure. Real oatmeal can be an inspiration. But there’s no need to limit yourself to that list at all.

You can let your imagination run wild! Grilled cheese on whole-grain bread? Why not? And what about yogurt? You can ratchet up the nutritional value of high-sugar conventional “yogurt desserts for breakfast” by switching to plain yogurt to which you add your own fruit, vanilla extract, and/or cinnamon. Artificial sweeteners are to be excluded from that list — if that’s the only way you can tolerate yogurt you need another plan.

But who says it has to be sweet at all? My father’s favorite way to eat yogurt is to mix it with cucumbers and tomatoes, diced small. And it is remarkably delicious. Yet another slightly more ambitious strategy is to wrap yogurt tightly in cheesecloth and leave it to hang by a string from the kitchen faucet for 8-12 hours until sufficient liquid has dripped out to form a firm ball of cheese within the cheesecloth. You can sprinkle this unbelievably good yogurt cheese with some fresh herbs and a drizzle of olive oil, and then you will wonder whatever made you think it had to be eaten sweet at all. 

There are a number of ways to tell if you’re being influenced by the food industry’s list of acceptable breakfast items. You might have decided once and for all to stop buying Raizin Brand for your kids (one of the highest sugar cereals on the market) but replaced it with a different “breakfast cereal” product that seems a little less sweet. Or you might decide to see if your kids like Nature’s Valiant granola bars for breakfast. Maybe it’s still Eggy waffles, but a version that contains whole wheat. But don’t feel like you have to choose from the list of processed breakfast items. At least most of the time.