India, July 12 -- It's hard to tell how far back breakfast goes. We know a bit about what ancient humans ate, but not when. That picture only becomes clearer with the arrival of the written word, and the records more or less confirm that we have breakfasted for millennia. The Iliad, written in Greece about 3,000 years ago, mentions a pre-noon meal prepared by a weary woodsman before beginning his day's labours. Ancient Indian epics use the word "pratarasa" for the morning meal. In the Ramayana, in fact, Ravana threatens to chop the unyielding Sita into pieces for his pratarasa. It meant very different things though, to those two demographics: the workers and the elite. The former grabbed what calories they could access and afford. The latter typically sat down to a meal of their choice, at a time of their choice. This remains true today. Class was so woven into the idea, in fact, that the meal fell out of favour in medieval Europe. In her 2013 book, Breakfast: A History, food historian Heather Anderson writes that eating such a meal in this era "meant that one was poor, and needed precious calories to get to the business of peasantry". That outright rejection of the morning meal didn't last very long. For one thing, the afternoon meal was so elaborate that the nobility required a light snack while it was being prepared. Then, the colonial era brought in products such as tea, coffee and chocolate, and breakfasts, of a certain kind, became fashionable. This was the first major intersection of commerce with breakfast. There would be so many more. The morning rush, women in the workplace and concerns about nutrition have all fed into the great advertising campaigns built around this meal. It started in the early years of the industrial revolution, when the world's first packaged breakfast cereal, Granula, was invented by James Caleb Jackson in 1863. This one was sugar-free. But then came Kellogg's cornflakes, invented by brothers John and Will Kellogg in 1894. Will, distinctly pro-sugar, set up the company, and began to pitch this sweetened treat as the sensible, healthy, convenient choice. A trendsetting campaign by General Foods came next, created for the breakfast cereal Grape-Nuts, in 1944. "Eat a Good Breakfast - Do a Better Job" went the slogan. Amid its radio advertisements, it quoted "nutritionists" as saying breakfast was "the most important meal of the day". In these early years of advertising, this sparked something of a panic: was the family getting the morning meal it needed and deserved? Cue packaged cereals in a range of flavours, and products like biscuits, malted beverages, condensed milk and cured meats, all high in salts, carbohydrates or sugars, and using these highs to pitch themselves as the ideal source of energy for the day. "The message was that you shouldn't linger in the morning, you should be out there - winning," says food historian Megan Elias, curator of food history at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. "And because these were the food ways of the Global North, where industrialisation began, they became associated with modernity." Affluent Indian households are still drawn to packaged foods marketed with buzzwords such as 'protein-rich' or 'probiotic' that signal wealth and modernity, points out author and independent brand coach Ambi Parameswaran. In the same way that we swapped our nutritious and climate-friendly morning gruels for sugary coffee and tea. Do we need breakfast today? The debate on that continues. For those who wake hungry, a healthy morning meal containing protein, fibre, fruit and vegetables acts as an appetite moderator and can prevent snacking later in the day, studies have shown. Alexandra Johnstone, professor of appetite research at University of Aberdeen, Scotland, who conducted a government-funded study between 2017 and 2022 (published in Cell Metabolism), found that people who ate a substantial breakfast reported feeling fuller for longer, and were less hungry during the day. But she also found that people burned the same calories no matter what time they ate their biggest meal of the day. It will take more research to establish links between mealtimes and metabolism. "The science of when to eat, chrononutrition, is vital but relatively new," she says. For the moment, she recommends following cues the body offers, because it is basing them on your specific conditions: circadian rhythms, lifestyle, age and metabolic health. In India, tradition can serve as a good guide too. Since most of the country did not have to factor in scarcities, thanks to temperate climates and lush vegetation, conventional recipes shaped by local conditions remain a healthy option for person and planet. South India's warm temperatures still allow idli and dosa batter to ferment, yielding doughs that can be turned into nutritious morning meals with a little steaming or roasting. These dishes are light, comforting and nourishing, says food-science writer and HT Wknd columnist Swetha Sivakumar. "Fermentation breaks down starches and proteins and reduces compounds such as phytic acid, which bonds with minerals such as iron and zinc. This makes nutrients more available to the body, and the grains easier to digest," she says. From rice cakes and stews to masala rusks and gruels, hearty options abound across the country (see the story alongside for more on these). Some are being crowded out by more-recent inventions, which range from packaged indulgences to Instagram trends. Together, the options represent something less visible: an environmental footprint that is increasingly being shaped by what we choose. In the first ever study of the carbon footprint of sandwiches, for instance, researchers at the University of Manchester found in 2018 that an all-day breakfast sandwich (loaded with cured breakfast meats such as bacon and sausage, and condiments such as mayonnaise and ketchup) generates 1,441 gm of CO2eq, roughly the same as driving a car for 19 km. This is mainly because of how carbon-intensive meat is; how much packaging and refrigeration are involved; and how far many of the components have to travel before they are even manufactured. India doesn't eat a lot of these sandwiches; here, sugar is among the most water-intensive ingredients on the breakfast table. So, what should one choose instead? "When it comes to planetary and gut health, few breakfasts can compete with traditional fermented or millet recipes," says Mridula Ramesh, a climate-tech investor, Wknd columnist, and founder of the research body Sundaram Climate Institute. Fermented options like the idli or neeragaram are great for the gut. Millets contain more nutrients and are climate resilient, so they are a better choice than rice or wheat. "But millets don't compete in taste with sugar, or have large companies backing them, so they cannot scale," Ramesh says. That's one of the key troubles with breakfast: the noise. Urban India has the answers, waiting in childhood memories and old recipe books. What's needed is to tune out the din and reclaim them. "We may think we're eating what we want to eat," as Elias of the Smithsonian museum puts it, "but our desires have roots in culture, and they are shaped by the market." It isn't just breakfast, of course. Sit down to any meal and ask yourself: Who really chose what's on your plate?...