Breakfast Club

Tyler MacAuley

Writing 122

Professor Cook

10/15/13

The Breakfast Club

Across the ages, people have come up with many questions and issues, seeking answers to life's many difficult quandaries. “What should I wear today?” “Is genocide wrong?” “What is the price of tea in China?” I do not seek to answer all of these questions (except for genocide, which is wrong!), but rather the one which I believe is most important, the question many frazzled students and employees have had to ask themselves throughout time and space: “Should I eat breakfast this morning?”

Some people may say that this is an extremely obvious question. “Of course you should always have breakfast! It's the most important meal of the day!” But despite the initial simplicity of this query, there is a surprising amount of depth to this issue.

            Normal issues require, and indeed demand, a staunch stance to be stood, but I say that which breakfast club you belong to demands more than just five seconds of thought! On one hand, why should you not eat breakfast? Well, as someone who attends Job Corps, I do not decide what I eat for breakfast. Sometimes they serve something that gets the guts in a grind, while other days I am a bolt of lightning striking the cafeteria doors, homing in on the french toast like some sort of experimental bread-seeking missile. Other factors here simply boil down to how you're feeling on that particular morning. Maybe you're sick, maybe you're about to miss the bus or be late for class/work/rodeo clowning, what have you. If you're crunched for time, sometimes you don't have time to crunch some toast. And what if you're broke and have only enough money and/or time to eat one meal in the day? Eating breakfast is basically flint and tinder for your third chakra, and these poor saps don't want to be hungry all day!

            Those are all at least semi-valid points from those of the Knights who say “Nay”, but what about the ones who wave their breakfast-y banners up high for all the world to see? As mentioned before, breakfast kick-starts your stomach, which puts your metabolism into gear. This has the rather pleasing effect of waking you up, increasing your energy, and most importantly, promoting weight loss. Yes, you heard me right. Contrary to common sense, eating breakfast can actually make you lose weight instead of gaining it. In fact, according to webmd.com, skipping breakfast has been linked to obesity. Thinner people have been shown to eat breakfast far more often than the heavyweights. Breakfast will also help your mind, so if you have to study for a test, crunch down on a breakfast bar or something. The old gray matter will thank you for it.

            And so we come to the weighing of the arguments. On one hand, eating breakfast is time-consuming and can be rather expensive. Not only that, but some of us don't have the option of choosing what we are going to be eating. On the other hand, eating breakfast is simply a good idea. Even if you have to choke down some bran flakes and deal with the gastrointestinal consequences later on, breakfast wakes you up, helps you lose weight, and aids in brain function, thus why it is called The Most Important Meal. Humans absolutely need to break the fast in the morning to properly function, so while it may be tempting to hit the snooze alarm ad nauseum, if you bite the bullet and just bite the bacon, you will feel better and more energetic than if you had caught those extra five winks. And now comes the hard part: get up and go!