Breakfast Foods

A twenty-first-century American might find a typical Pilgrim breakfast of cider, cornmeal mush, and maple syrup a bit spartan, but it would be recognizable. However, to a Pilgrim, a twenty-first-century breakfast of corn flakes with sliced banana, a toaster pastry, and a glass of orange juice would be almost incomprehensible. How we went from one to the other is the story of breakfast in America. And like the stories of many American foods, it involves a new continent, a mixture of scientific discoveries, and vast waves of immigration from around the globe, with the addition of the Industrial Revolution and the American propensity for advertising and marketing.