History of breakfast

Breakfast is the first meal taken after rising from a night's sleep, most often eaten in the early morning before undertaking the day's work. The Old English word for dinner, disner, means to break a fast, and was the first meal eaten in the day until its meaning shifted in the mid-13th century. It was not until the 15th century that “breakfast” came into use in written English to describe a morning meal, which literally means to break the fasting period of the prior night; in Old English the term was morgenmete meaning "morning meal."

From archeological evidence at Neolithic sites we know that there was an early reliance on cereal grains once agriculture had begun. Neolithic peoples used quern-stones to grind the hulled grains, then boiled them to make a kind of porridge. The domesticating of crops is thought to have begun in the Fertile Crescent around 7000 BC. Three of the eight so-called founder crops are cereals – emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, and barley.Rye and oats were cultivated in Europe starting in the early Neolithic in Anatolia before spreading to the rest of Europe in the Iron age and Bronze Age.

Peasants ate a daily meal, most likely in the morning, consisting of beer, bread, and onions before they left for work in the fields or work commanded by the pharaohs.

In Greek literature, Homer makes numerous mentions of ariston, a meal taken not long after sunrise. The Iliad notes this meal with regard to a labor-weary woodsman eager for a light repast to start his day, preparing it even as he is aching with exhaustion. The opening prose of the 16th book of The Odyssey mentions breakfast as the meal being prepared in the morning before attending to one’s chores. Eventually ariston was moved to around noon, and a new morning meal was introduced.

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