During the European Middle Ages, the tradition which was reinforced by religious edicts was for people to eat only two meals a day. However, there were some exceptions to this: laborers, people who were sick, people who were very old, and people who were very young were allowed to break their fast in the morning. By the seventeenth century, three meals a day had become the norm and breakfast (the morning meal) was seen “normal.” Today some nutritionists claim that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and have noted the improved cognition among children who eat breakfast.
In North America one of the common forms of breakfast involves the consumption of eggs and some form of pork, usually in the form of ham, bacon, or sausage. Tad Tuleja, in his book Curious Customs, writes:
“This grease-lover’s special reflects the earliest colonists’ affection for the pig.”
Pigs required less care than cattle and the colonists simply let them forage for themselves, often destroying the unfenced Indian fields and getting fat on the corn which they found there. It was, of course, a capital offense for an Indian to kill a pig which was rooting around in an Indian corn field.
One indication of the importance of pigs is seen today in the expression “high on the hog” which associates wealth and hogs.
Welcome to Street Prophets Saturday, an open thread in which you can vent about food—not just breakfast, but lunch, dinner, high tea, and dessert—or politics or government or climate change or about stupid human tricks.