Not your father’s breakfast

Published 12:04 am Tuesday, November 10, 2026

As I was buttering my bagel this morning, I flashed back to the days of my father, who always ate what in those days was a conventual high calorie breakfast, which included eggs, bacon or sausage, toast or biscuits, and of course coffee; sometimes there was also gravy when it was a biscuit and gravy day.

The reason people like my father and others of that generation needed to eat a big breakfast was because they worked a lot harder than what is required in these more worker-friendly times.

Before someone takes offence at that statement let me add that I know there are still some jobs out there that do entail hard labor, but overall we have it pretty easy today. Kids of those earlier times could also eat bigger breakfasts, but that was prior to the arrival of television and video games.

A lot of kids today play only video games which do not require moving around much, and a smaller breakfast provides them with enough energy to sit in front of a screen for hours at a time.

I think kids of my generation, before all the inside entertainment, needed the extra calories a big breakfast provided, because we played outside in a more physical way. To look at me today you would think I was still eating the way my father did, but without the hard work afterwards.

The truth is, I eat less now than I did in my working days, but the damage was already done in the years before. I remember before I reached the thirty year age milestone I could eat all I wanted, but back then my weight was sneaky and did not show up on the scales.

At thirty however all those fat cells that had been sleeping inside the younger me woke up and attacked me all at once, and overnight I went from a skinny kid with a 29 inch waist to what I am today.

Now that I am older I have been forced to go from those big breakfasts that I always loved to toast and coffee most mornings. I do slip now and then and must have the biscuit and gravy, or a sweet roll, which is what keeps me from getting back to that 29 inch waist of my youth. I guess if I want to have big breakfasts like my father did I need to look for a job; does anyone know if they are hiring people to play Santa Clause yet?

Jack Miller is a longtime Sedalia resident and former radio news reporter.