When it comes to American cuisine, traditional breakfast foods are among the top items on the list. Americans love breakfast, and certainly not just at the traditional breakfast time. Offer a typical American eggs, bacon, and pancakes any time of the day, and chances are they won’t turn it down. However, it might be surprising, but no less true, that even our breakfast has been affected by the COVID pandemic.
Americans, while craving a delicious breakfast, have also always wanted that breakfast to be super convenient. This is actually why eggs and toast became such a popular choice very early in our history. Chicken or other fowl eggs were readily available every morning, as was bread. This American breakfast tradition has remained a staple in the American diet throughout our history as a nation.
In 2021, with the COVID pandemic still looming, the majority of us are now working from home, which means that the things we often did for breakfast pre-pandemic, are no longer the best options. We aren’t able to quickly stop at Starbucks on our way to the office since the office is in our own homes.
The pandemic has had an interesting, dichotomous effect on our breakfast food consumption. While the percentage of Americans consuming breakfast has remained constant pre and post COVID, we’re actually consuming more breakfast food than before as we are increasing our intake of comfort foods, and breakfast fits the bill any time of the day. Meanwhile, during the traditional breakfast hours, we’re cooking at home more and making healthier choices than we did before the pandemic drove us all inside.
Seventy percent of Americans eat breakfast during the workweek, yet 56% report really being too busy to actually cook that breakfast. However, with home cooking having increased by 38% from 2019 to 2020, we’re looking for easy, healthy breakfast foods that we can prepare and consume quickly.
On the other hand, we’re also using breakfast foods for comfort, so we’ve increased our intake of pancakes by 25%, waffles by 20%, sausage by 16%, bacon by 15%, and cereal by 11%. Even when we eat these things for lunch or dinner (or midnight snack time), we’re still looking for things that don’t take too much time to prepare.
Meal preparation is one of the biggest deterrents to eating breakfast during the week. Sixty-three percent of us opt for a little more time in bed than for a time consuming breakfast. This is where heat-to-eat meals come in.
Heat-to-eat breakfasts are just the ticket to resolving our issues with the time it takes to make a great breakfast. They’re super convenient, delicious, and easy on the wallet…which is more than we can say for stopping at a coffee shop several times a week.
In our modern day, post pandemic, overly busy and overly committed society, heat-to-eat breakfasts allow us to keep enjoying those traditional American breakfast items and maintain our constant need for them to be time efficient and convenient. Pass the pancakes!
Learn more about American breakfast habits in the infographic below:
Source: BobEvansGrocery.com