What is a normal breakfast for you?

Between discussions of foodstuffs and the search for how to use said foodstuffs in recipes I had another question pop up.

What is a 'normal' breakfast for you?

I come from an upbringing of meat and potatoes in various forms. Nothing like a few fried eggs and a slab of bacon but it isn't necessarily the healthiest thing in the world depending on your body.

What do you all eat? Has it changed over time? Any neat recommendations?

I've been terrible with breakfast for the past few years. I grab what I can from a gas station because I get up early for work and just rush out the door. I know...

This week, I have started making Overnight Oats and have been tolerating them well! Still working on how to improve them and tweak the nutrition as best as I can.

I'm hoping to pick up some new ideas from this thread.

What do I think is "normal"? Eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, pancakes, french toast, regular toast, box cereal, oatmeal, fruit/yogurt smoothies, breakfast sandwhiches, breakfast pizza...

What do I actually eat lately? I've been trying to cut out most carbs, so I tend towards various forms of eggs/sausage/bacon with the occasional smoothie. Boiled eggs by themselves are not super appetizing, but I'll cook up a few and eat them on my way to work. If I have more time, I'd mash them up with some butter and salt and pepper.

for me it's different depending on the day. The days I run in the morning, I might have a cup of milk tea and a bit of yogurt when I wake up, then after my run a protein shake (banana, milk, protein powder, flax, oat bran, a spoon each of instant coffee and cinnamon. heavenly!).
Workdays when I don't run, it's either yogurt and fruit or whatever leftovers look appealing. If I really have my act together and have bread/crackers in the house, I might make a pot of beans to have beans on toast.

Weekends I spend with my honey, and we usually have traditional breakfast- eggs, omelets, french toast to use up stale bread, or if we're really going nuts, cinnamon buns, coffee cake, etc. This weekend I have a glut of tomatoes and will be making that pot of beans, so I'm thinking I'll get in some sausages and we'll do a full English, which is a treat I do maybe once a year.
I also don't really drink coffee during the week- to me it's a weekend breakfast thing (although I will drink iced in the afternoon).

(since you're looking for ideas, and I'm responsible for feeding the troops here, i'll share my husband's breakfast too. He is from a bread-for-breakfast culture and has pre-diabetes, and so for years I made whole grain bread for him. When my hand started giving me trouble I could no longer make bread, so he decided he would try oatmeal. He microwaves a bowl every morning and eats it with flax and either fruit or protein powder. He was amazed at how full it keeps him through the morning.  Ah and my daughter has no appetite because of medications she takes, but needs to have something, so she most days has chia seed lemonade for breakfast.)

Matt McSpadden wrote:Boiled eggs by themselves are not super appetizing, but I'll cook up a few and eat them on my way to work.  

Not to sideline too much, but.... what you putting on those boiled eggs? I have become a diehard boiled egg fan because of... good french mustard, chile crisp, gomashio [sesame/salt], Old Bay, white pepper wasabi powder.... we used to always have a neglected container of boiled eggs in the fridge but now it's like the best mini-umami-snack-vehicle and I can barely keep up with demand!!

This is a highly complex question in spite of its apparent simplicity.  Breakfast is a variable for me.   Most often it is coffee and toast.  I make the coffee.  My wife makes the toast. On weekends we upgrade to a cinnamon roll.  From time to time I will grab an egg or two.   This is me at 75.

When I was younger weekends and days of physical labor were started with a full breakfast of coffee eggs, biscuits gravy, hash browns, and sausage.

Very rarely I will make pancakes.  Oddly oatmeal, or any breakfast cereal, is an evening snack.

I have tried and tried to eat breakfast but all I can think about is how it affects the taste of my coffee! It makes it not taste as good if I eat first and if I drink it first, my appetite, which is not much to start with early in the day, is stymied.

It is a lose/lose so I have given up and substituted a 16oz mug of coffee for my breakfast.

That being said, I have worked with people before who get so hangry if they don't eat that you just don't want to be around them. Some folks have to have all the meals and some don't. I am thankful for the variety in humans!

I don't have a normal breakfast. I mean that in two ways.

Many of the typical breakfast foods seem super-weird to me (pancakes, danishes, cinnamon rolls, waffles, boxed cereal, etc are all obviously dessert junk food...I can't imagine trying to found my day on that -- though I sometimes have a bottle of cola if I'm on the road, so I can't get too holier-than-thou in this regard). And I don't eat meat, so all the sausage and bacon stuff is alien (though I like veggie sausage at dinner time...shrug). Eggs are great, but who has the time on a normal morning for that? (Unless I have a carton of boiled eggs ready or maybe a jar of them pickling.)

And also, I vary a lot what I eat from day to day and season to season. If I had to pick a most-typical breakfast it would be a banana when I wake up at 0300-0400 and then a big bowl of brown rice with soya and pickled veggies (kimchi or carrot nukazuke most often) and furikake 2-3 hours later.

Often I'll skip that "typical" breakfast and have leftovers of whatever's in the pot from last night (spicier than I meant to chili right now) maybe with tortillas. If I've baked bread that week, I might have toast instead of rice. And that banana is some other fruit as often as banana -- apple or orange or raisins or whatever. The rice is sometimes oat groats or mixed grains instead. Sometimes I just have a hunk of Swiss cheese. There's often a square of dark chocolate involved. I've just started occasionally drinking tea with breakfast again after taking a decade off from that practice. Especially in the summer, I might throw together a quick salad for breakfast or just wander the garden as soon as the sun comes up and nibble this and that. The day after Thanksgiving and Christmas we all have mashed potatoes for breakfast. :)

(Breakfast is incredibly important to me and I absolutely cannot skip it.)

I usually can't eat before midday.  Probably a genetic thing as my ancestors would normally eat one meal at midday and maybe a snack before bed.

If I force myself to break my fast before noon, it wrecks me for the rest of the day.

When I do break my fast, something savory is my style.  About a third of each protine, carb, and veg.

But I do have a coffee or two,usually one at 4am, and another about 8am.  

Because I am an intermittent faster. I only eat between 12(noon) and 8 pm. So for me all I have in the morning is coffee.

What I break my fast with is usually eggs and kale in a wrap with grated cheese. Or some kinda of leftovers. Anything with too many carbs makes me somewhat lethargic as my first meal.

Breakfast here is mostly about fibre. It's usually: bran cereal like Bran Buds or flakes, cooked oatmeal with added pure bran or bran muffins. ( the type where you make the huge batch that stays in the fridge and you bake as needed)
Plain yogurt, either fresh/ frozen fruit or homemade fruit sauces as well and milk or soy milk, if there is is cereal.

We've all found things are better generally if we stick to this. Special/holiday meals with things like pancakes, fancy eggs and all that happen at lunch instead.

As others weigh in, I'd like to possibly add the question of where the notion came in that breakfast is "the most important meal of the day".

Perhaps like many, a childhood weekend might see typical bacon/eggs/ toast/pancakes type of fare on one or both days.  Weekdays/workdays  were pretty regimented with hot or cold breakfast cereal, frequently with sliced banana, whole grapefruit, and then off to work/school.  Interestingly, both parents tended to adhere to this as well.

But now....

Like several answers above, it would not be unusual for me, both when working and now in retirement, to have a cup of coffee and not have any food until after the noon hour.  It was more common near the end of the career to grab an extra coffee on the way to work and include some sweet pastry or muffin, but at home I tend to not bother.   This is why I ask the question above...if so many of us are skipping "the most important meal of the day", why is it considered that and what might we gain by at least something possibly more ..... 'thoughtful'..?

I do not eat breakfast. I consider it unhealthy to eat three meals per day. I like a big meal mid-day, and perhaps a smaller snack a couple hours before sunset.

If I felt out of kilter, and decided to eat breakfast, it would not contain carbohydrates. I would eat eggs, fish, meat, or fats.

Like some others here, I generally only eat one or two meals a day;  I start the day with some unsweetened tea, and when I do break my fast (sometimes at 10 am, or sometimes as late as 4 pm) I like to eat protein and vegetables, preferably some/all of them fermented.  Today it was a 4pm "breakfast" (aka dinner) with parsnip/cabbage/turnip greens/carrot/pumpkin, chicken strips and fermented chow chow.  Yesterday it was closer to 11 am and I had eggs, bacon and kimchi.  

Eggs and kimchi is a match made in heaven, in my opinion.  Bacon is simply gilding the lily.

When I was a kid I loved a big hearty meal for breakfast.  But somewhere in my late 20s or early 30s, something changed, and nowadays I can only eat about half a cup worth of food the first hour or two after waking up. Any more, and I get gut misery and what I ate leaves violently. Coffee, tea, and water are all fine, it's just solid food that seems to do this.

I try to keep it lower carb (no more than about 15, and low GI.) Usually it's something like a handful of nuts, a barely sweetened oatmeal cookie, or a hardboiled egg.

Breakfast - home made meusli - oats, pumpkin seeds, sunflower kernels;   2 tablespoonsful + teaspoon of powdered linseed  +  prunes + milk.  Left to soak while black coffee consumed and news caught up with.   6 days ... then Sunday is treat day - bacon, egg & toast.
The powdered linseed helps with dodgy finger joint pains - but not for everyone, I'm told, sometimes I add sultanas.

G Freden wrote:.....

Eggs and kimchi is a match made in heaven, in my opinion.  Bacon is simply gilding the lily.

This passage has now stuck in my head and will be my break-fast inspiration from here on out!..... ;-)

In a rush and a big day ahead? A boiled egg or three, quick oats with dehydrated apples, or warmed up leftovers
Not in a rush? Sautéed veggies including lots of onions and garlic which usually contains some prepared beans or peas or lentils
Not in a rush and still a big day ahead? Brunch: A low gluten crêpe filled with sautéed veg and maybe some kind of protein

I am heartened but not surprised to find myself here in the company of other intermittent fasters, and especially unwitting ones: I never set out to fast between mittents, I just noticed that if I skipped breakfast and then powered through the 10am tummy rumbles, I had more energy and felt generally better the rest of the day, so I kept doing it. The 10am tummy rumbles eventually went away too.

Over time I also learned about the benefits of doing this in terms of cellular health, the evidence suggesting it decreases cancer risk, etc., which further encouraged me. Now it would feel very strange to eat before 11am, though many days I don't eat before the afternoon. My "window" ends up being between 11am and 7pm most days, but sometimes is much smaller than that, like 3pm to 6pm.

When I do finally break my "fast", usually the first thing I'll do is swig a few gulps of cold coffee, followed by one or two of my energy balls (https://permies.com/t/268866/energy-bites-hold-peanut-butter), then whatever else I packed, then usually an apple at the end before I get back to work or driving home or whatever.

I notice that if I eat at, say, 9am then I am much more likely to feel hungry to the point of distraction at noon.

That said, I will sometimes eat breakfast on weekends, sort of as a "splurge" (because I like to cook, and sometimes on weekends I have time to cook in the morning*) and to keep my weight up.

To that last point, I found that since I started intermittent fasting, during my "window" I can eat basically as much as I want, of whatever I want, with virtually no noticeable change in my energy or weight retention or whatever. (It probably also helps that I don't drink alcohol or sugary drinks. Maybe also that I have a physically demanding job, though this was also the case back when I didn't.)

*To address the OP more directly, I used to love having a beer and a fried egg on a Saturday morning. These days it would be a zero-alcohol beer and a fried egg if I was going that route. I am also a fan of dumping whatever veggies I've already got chopped up in the fridge into a pan along with scrambled eggs and sprinkling cheese over it. My grits are legendary and my kids request them constantly. Sometimes I am in the mood for oatmeal with just salt and butter, always with some raw oats mixed in at the end to improve the texture. Leftover Chinese or Indian takeout for breakfast, even cold, has kind of a special place in my heart though it's been a long time since I had any of that ($$$).

I usually have an Asian style bowl of noodles- chapchae or mung bean or rice vermicelli that I have rehydrated. I put the noodles in a bowl of homemade veggie  broth consisting of miso, ginger, garlic, onion, turmeric, black pepper, mushrooms, seaweed, tofu and dark greens or spicy sprouts I grow. Top it off with kimchi and some Braggs and it warms me; wakes me and is gentle on my system in the morning, especially with the ginger.
I have this prepped in advance so most days I reheat.
I have sensory issues with my steel cut oats in the morning so generally eat them midday. I consider them “a med” for cholesterol, digestion etc… I have to play games with my brain but I appreciate their benefits.
If it’s not the noodles for breakfast, it’s something savory- hummu on bread, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, dark greens

I was not raised on these breakfasts but through years of living elsewhere and learning different ways, I have come to crave them and have a hard time with anything sweet in the morning.

I do start the day with half caf strong coffee with a frothed plant milk and ceylon cinnamon.

   One of my favorite breakfasts consists of a poached egg over lentils and vegetables.   I'd eat it any time of day, but I love it at breakfast.
   
    The lentils are always leftovers.  I cook them in homemade chicken or vegetable stock. Then I saute lots of vegetables and add then to the lentils.  Often these are "zero waste" odds and ends: celery tops,  the tiny pieces that fall off when I cut up cauliflower, pieces trimmed from the stem end of jalapeno peppers, the awkward ends of onions, you get the idea.  Of course, garlic is in the mix.  Add a little grated cheese, pop that poached egg on top and mmmm. I feel the best with a heavy on the veg./protein/fiber and some healthy carb mixed in.

Axel Rosie, my German Shepherd is calling. More later .

   

I'm in S. FL and if the weather is cooler, we like boiled millet with coconut milk, ground flax seed, MCT oil, cinnamon, nutmeg and maple syrup. If weather's hot, we usually skip breakfast and start eating at lunch.

I make 1  1/2 pound ground pork .
Fry it up .  Set half of that aside
I put one LARGE container egg beaters( 18 eggs )  in the pan with the pork . And scramble them.
I make frozen biscuits .
I make country gravy with the other half of the cooked pork
I make a large bag frozen hash browns .
I put a biscuit in a bowl ( 6 bowls )
Then hashbrowns, and eggs then gravy on top the biscuit and hashbrowns.
WA LA .   I make my own BREAKFAST BOWLS to last me all week for work

Generally, I have a quesadilla for breakfast.  I am not a morning person and always am late to work...but no one cares.   I make my quesadilla usually just two tortillas and cheese, Sometimes I spice it up with some salsa or hot sauce, or if I'm really hungry I'll add some leftover meat.  Anyway, I have it timed so that I can start my quesadilla and go get finished getting dressed, come out and flip it, and put my shoes on and then it's ready to go.

I used to eat an egg sandwich for breakfast every day...or oatmeal...or cheerios, until I figured out that I have food intolerances...to eggs and oats.  No wonder I had issues every day....for decades.  Ugh.

My favorite cheat breakfast is a sausage and cheese mcgriddle with a hashbrown and a diet coke.

About once a month I do get some JUST Egg, which is mung bean paste made to imitates scrambled egg.  I like the new frozen servings, you can cook them in a toaster.  They make a nice 'egg' sandwich.  

I am starting to get bored with quesadillas, so I'm thinking about going back to protein shakes, milk, banana, a mix of spices, and maybe some yogurt.  I did that for several years when if first figured out my egg issues.

What most of the commenters eat seems odd to me, but maybe I'm the odd ball.  I wake up famished and start the day with microwave-warmed juice (apple, cranberry, or pineapple are my favorites) to raise my blood sugar level.  Feed my livestock.  Then I cook up a couple of fresh eggs (over medium, scrambled, poached or soft-boiled), toast (2 slices of sourdough bread, an English muffin, or a bagel) with either berry jam or creamed cheese/yogurt/fruit concoction that I whip up about once a week, and a cup of hot tea.  On Sundays I usually have cinnamon rolls, Danish, apple fritters, coffee cake, or filled donuts with tea.  I don't drink coffee, alcohol, or carbonated beverages or eat or drink anything with high fructose corn syrup, GMO, or labeled "manufactured food".

I seldom eat lunch, if I do it is a sandwich, and I have a 3 course supper of salad, pasta or stir-fry, sometimes pizza or the like, and dessert, milk or tea.

With that high-carb, sugary fare, I've maintained my weight at 175 for at least the past 10 years (I'm 5'10") and my blood sugar level and cholesterol test "normal".  I'm 78 and have eaten this way most of my life.

Generally just coffee.  I usually eat one meal/day around noon.  I generally have some hard-boiled eggs in the refrigerator from my chickens, so on the rare days I want something in the morning, it will be one of those eggs just to hold me until the main meal.

@Cimarron Layne-
I'm happy that type of diet works for you- truly.  As you know, too much of America is overweight and/or has lifestyle-related health issues.  I've been overweight for many years and have moved to a low-carb diet.  It has been by far the easiest for me to maintain.  People who go very low-carb, frequently eat only once or twice/day as they are not hungry very often.  Not trying to sell you on it, but it works for many which is why you are seeing comments about eating less often and/or skipping breakfast here.

I stumbled on my most productive eating routine while participating in the Wheaton Labs Bootcamp.

I've never been one to find early morning hours productive for any work type activity, without external schedule demands it is a calm, grounding time for me. A need to plan an extra 15+ minutes in the morning for food while staying at base camp (moreso when commuting from the lab) led to a skipping of breakfast at that time. After a short period of psychological hunger pains induced from past habit, I would feel normal and then even better than usual by late morning. Breaking fast at lunch time even seemed to make the food taste better.

Soon after I read about what some would call "intermittent fasting", based on a theory that the additional time between meals encourages your body to work through the easily accessible carb stockpiles to start processing some fat cells for energy. I've never had a real problem with obesity, but it seems to me that that periodically accessing those reserves keeps the overall body functioning much better.

when I was 6, and starting elementary school, mom started grad school and had to leave about a half hour before the school bus arrived. She started baking a chocolate sheet cake every weekend and we had an automatic coffee maker; so I began eating a piece of chocolate cake and a cup of coffee for breakfast and I still have that breakfast 60 years later. Oh, I have had all the other sorts of breakfasts, but I always come HOME. Nowadays it is not really chocolate cake as such, but a chocolate-banana scone recipe of my own invention - with whole wheat flour, corn meal, oats, raisins, molasses, a little bit of sugar, a healthy scoop of cocoa powder, and a few mashed up bananas. A half pecan on top of each of 12 units baked every six days; and accompanied by two cups of black coffee, no sugar. let me know if you want the recipe!

I have two sons that each steel cut oatmeal every morning. As I am retired, I am craving Peanut Butter and Cracker sandwiches! I don’t know why but that’s what I have. Breakfast has always been important to me. I have to eat something!! When I get too hungry I dry heave. I usually carry a pack of Crackers with me because I never know when I all of a sudden am starving feeling.

I try to get my fiber in the 1st meal of the day.   So, one of the first things I do is hit the garden up for whatever greens I can find ...or walk along the wheat field until I find some wild greens if my garden is bare.   One of my favorite combos is parsley chives and kale ...only a handful, chopped, sauteed, and a couple eggs dumped on top.  Maybe if I'm splurging, a piece of toast to go with.  

today I had fresh harvested cilantro, garlic chives, onion chives, kale, and arugula with two eggs, and toast with wild peach marmalade.

I eat leftovers.  Whatever is there.  It may be eggs and toast or spaghetti or fish.  Just a little something to get started.

It depends....

There's a fair bit of variation to breakfast.  As I "work" from home, it can depend upon how much time She Who Must Be Obeyed has (did she get up, does she have a particular early start time, etc).  We typically have bread in the house, and now often sourdough.

When in season, there's nothing like fresh tomato on toast with a bit of pepper or basil.  We sometimes add some cheese to it.  The last of our fresh tomatoes is calling....  Sometimes cheese on toast, oatmeal, overnight oats, or with more time something sauteed / fried up.  That will often be a mix of vegetables, typically leaning heavily on potatoes and may have some egg, leftover meat, or bacon involved.

I don't do prepared breakfast cereal.  She sometimes makes a granola / meusli mix based on a recipe from brain health experts.  I don't often have toast with sweet stuff like jam or jelly, although we are growing more and more of our own fruit and wind up making those preserves.  That will sometimes accompany a main dish.  Peanut butter on toast is just as rare.

I guess looking at it, there's a fair bit of variety, although there are some fallbacks.

Of course, coffee is involved...fair trade bird friendly is what comes to the house these days.

Forgot to add that my overnight oats typically includes some chia seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, cocoa powder, hemp hearts, and often a few raisins / dried currants / dried cranberries.

My breakfast typically also includes some Greek yogourt topped with some ground flax seed, and fruit - often orange, banana, kiwi, or when we splurge a couple dates.

Porridge and herbal tea or coffee.

Since my first gnashers grew, mother put me on eggs and ryebread for breakfast.
Two-three eggs with two slices rye bread.
Grandfather had about 60 chickens so it was my every day breakfast and I loved it.

Today I am 62, my annual health check a week ago was like in the past, well within all limits and since you have to arrive sober and with empty stomach to the examination, I had afterwards my usual five fried eggs on rye bread for breakfast.

Despite of this and for our "weight watchers" I went through all kind of weight classes from 76 Kg (167 lbs) to 113 Kg (249 lbs) by just being myself and eat what I was thinking of, and since the last 18 years I am constantly around 94 Kg (207 lbs).

But sure I love my five eggs on rye bread in the morning.
Since we have our farm and our own (100 each at present) Brahmas and Plymouth Rock Chickens I know they are from literally "wild" Chickens.  
As a mechanic I learned early: "Never touch a running system"

I relocated to Thailand 2002 I have adapted to the Thai cuisine, hence the solid western food is not often seen in my Kitchen...
...but nothing wrong to put some fried eggs on my Rab Moo for dinner, isn't it?

John Weiland wrote:As others weigh in, I'd like to possibly add the question of where the notion came in that breakfast is "the most important meal of the day".
.....
Like several answers above, it would not be unusual for me, both when working and now in retirement, to have a cup of coffee and not have any food until after the noon hour.  It was more common near the end of the career to grab an extra coffee on the way to work and include some sweet pastry or muffin, but at home I tend to not bother.   This is why I ask the question above...if so many of us are skipping "the most important meal of the day", why is it considered that and what might we gain by at least something possibly more ..... 'thoughtful'..?

This is an interesting question to me, too. My nutrition degree taught us that it is perfectly natural and common for older folks to have less & less of an appetite, and we are taught to encourage older people to keep eating enough, not to under-eat. Supposedly humans need 1600 calories even if laying in bed all day. Many people eat less than that. I worked in assisted living and my observation was (and studies show) that older people eat more when they're with someone else. If you're caring for an older person, you'll notice they keep eating if you're eating with them. Humans mimic people they like, or if they're having a pleasant interaction. So maybe there's an element of being alone versus eating with family (when they were around).

Also, if people are retired they're probably expending less energy and therefore they don't feel the internal urge to eat as much. Physical activity makes a person hungry if they're paying attention to their bodies. Less active = less hungry. (excluding psychological eating issues)

I also did a research assignment on caloric restriction for longevity, where people purposely eat a certain percentage of what's recommended for their bodies (maybe 1250-1600 calories) and they live longer. There is roundabout evidence that this works, BUT it needs to include sufficient nutrients of all kinds, so pastries & bacon aren't part of it! So maybe as we age our bodies are trying to eat less calories in order to live longer? Overall, I think most people (in 1st world countries) are not super-in-tune with their bodies enough to naturally eat like that; I think we've lost our animal instincts and need to learn some things about food and health. There's a book called Intuitive Eating that's worth looking at, and another called Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family by Ellyn Satter. I read both of those for school, and they're both great for getting in tune with what our bodies need. Babies & toddlers know what they need, so if we raised them intentionally in that regard, they could potentially grow up eating perfectly for their own needs. Until someone gives them a Ding-Dong, lol.

Sorry, I know you specifically asked about breakfast, but I feel that what I said applies to all meals. Breakfast is important because it's meant to signal to your body that it's time to become active, and to give it the energy for activity. Maybe like the old days, or on homesteads with many chores, a person would go out and do some physical work, then come in and eat breakfast. The activity caused the hunger. Just my thoughts!

John Weiland wrote:As others weigh in, I'd like to possibly add the question of where the notion came in that breakfast is "the most important meal of the day".

Simple answer: It was a marketing line by John Harvey Kellogg (Kelloggs cereal) and later reinforced by the Edward Bernays (pioneer in the field of propaganda).
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/28/breakfast-health-america-kellog-food-lifestyle
Many societies, both currently and historically, have no real pattern of eating breakfast at all which is why that marketing pitch was created in the first place.

Kim Wills wrote:Supposedly humans need 1600 calories even if laying in bed all day. Many people eat less than that.

Don't confuse "need" with "need to eat".  Many of us have had years of practice at storing excess calories, so a large percentage of people have absolutely no need to eat 1600+ calories every day.  This dates back to our earliest pre-history where food was not consumed as regularly as now with available restaurants, supermarkets and pantries.  Humans have practiced fasting from the very beginning.  I understand that there are legitimate cases of people "wasting away", but that is a comparatively niche problem in modern societies right now.

Cujo Liva wrote:
Don't confuse "need" with "need to eat".  Many of us have had years of practice at storing excess calories, so a large percentage of people have absolutely no need to eat 1600+ calories every day.  This dates back to our earliest pre-history where food was not consumed as regularly as now with available restaurants, supermarkets and pantries.  Humans have practiced fasting from the very beginning.  I understand that there are legitimate cases of people "wasting away", but that is a comparatively niche problem in modern societies right now.

Well... I agree and I disagree. Sure we store excess calories that our bodies can use if needed. But just because we can survive a mini-famine doesn't mean we'll be at our best or not have negative consequences if that state goes on for too long. And I have nothing against fasting, for most people. I know there are some benefits.
But there is also such a thing as "overweight but undernourished". People can be overweight or obese but be vitamin or mineral deficient; they may not look like they're wasting away, but in a small way, more people are than we'd think. Someone who lives on processed foods, fast foods, microwave meals, etc, can quickly acquire excess fat but not have enough nutrients. In any case (calorie deficit or nutrient deficit) our bodies will take what it needs from our own bodies (including protein, calcium, whatever). Many people think that if they go without food their body will start burning all its fat, and that's it. Stop eating and lose weight. But that comes with invisible costs, including eventual "starvation mode" where they'll start retaining fat (if it's a very long time of undereating).