The human need to eat your own breakfast is almost inviolable. Not necessarily eating your own breakfast in the aphoristic sense that it is the most important meal of the day but eating a breakfast that is culturally yours to eat. As much as I love other culture’s food, I can’t handle eating a foreign breakfast every day. When I travel, I can wake up to dosa or congee or pho on occasion but I couldn’t face it daily. My street cred falls apart and I console myself with toast.

The only morning food exception that I can think of is roti canai, the flaky and buttery pancakes served across Malaysia, with curry sauce and sickly sweet tea. My bacon making skills  would fall by the wayside, but I could eat roti canai daily with the knowledge that I wasn’t missing anything. I love breakfast, which is probably why I both save eating it for special occasions and eat it as close to midday as humanly possible. Whenever I do eat it, it feels like a bonus meal; like I’ve somehow conned somebody into cooking me a second round of delicious dinner in the middle of the day.

Breakfast is when we’re at our most conformist which is a little strange because for the most part, we do it in the privacy of our own home where you can get away with consuming anything. I could be deep frying turkey for breakfast and the only person who would know would be my tailor and later, a purveyor of piano box sized coffins. No food is socially inappropriate if nobody sees you eat it. I’m sure your family could adjust to the early morning, deep fryer smell. So why is breakfast everyone’s most habitual meal?

Search the SBS archives for breakfast foods and the only trend that emerges amongst the international breakfasts featured is that they are as divergent as imaginable. Some are served hot, others cold. They range from spicy curries to bland, milky porridges. In the right cultural context, they are all habit forming but when separated out and grouped as breakfast meals they have little in common. What is in a breakfast probably matters less than eating it in repetition at the same time of the day.

The cultural specificity of breakfasts have something to do with early morning impairing decision making skills. Proximity to sleep promotes conservatism. Conservatism promotes eating the same slice of toast and a cup of tea, every day, forever and feeling altogether happy about it.