Breakfast is not what it used to be.

The only time now it reclaims its importance is when on holiday and you’ve paid for the privilege of some slices of artisan bread and a cold meat selection, so beloved by our European friends. Woe betide anyone in the family who doesn’t ‘fancy it this morning’ - you’ve paid for it, so we're having it!

Back in Blighty, I am firm in the belief that what you have for breakfast says a lot about the cut of your jib.

At present, still engaging with the folly of a diet that has not started working after 18 months, I placate my morning routine with a cup of Costa coffee which is purchased as part of a meal deal. Others, such as mother, eat the strangest breakfast which I cannot get my head around: Porridge. If it looks like sick and tastes like sick, then it’s generally sick.

It is one of the quirks of life that everything fun to do or tastes nice is ultimately bad for you, as we subconsciously weigh up the short-term pleasure against an untimely demise.

The full English is a point in question: Cooked well, there is little finer than a bacon, sausage, egg, hash brown and bean-riddled concoction that puts warmth in your heart and fur in the arteries.

Brett Ellis says that what you eat at breakfast says a lot about youBrett Ellis says that what you eat at breakfast says a lot about you

With cereals, although the choices available to us are hugely more diverse than in decades past, the new future greats are only so as they are caked in sugar.

A favourite of mine is chocolate granola. Feeling like a proper middle-aged dad, I place the granola bags on the checkout as I imagine others thinking ‘There goes a fitness freak’ before getting home and realising that said bags are only good for a mid-afternoon snack and are never going to see the morning light.

Toast, despite being a quick to prepare foodstuff is just an accompaniment. If you get it just right, with a slither of marmite perhaps, it acts like the beginning of a crack addiction and a slice or two is never enough.

By the second round, the quality goes down as they are more browned than round one and the time taken would have been better served by knocking up a bacon or sausage butty instead.

Sadly, in my circles, the time, care and love taken over breakfasts is becoming outdated as now either nothing or anything goes. Cold pizza, some Hula Hoops or a bag of Haribo are now the ‘go-tos’ as we no longer sit down as families with those strange plastic cereal holder contraptions (the likes of which are now only found in B&BS) and chew the cud before the day’s activity.

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher.