Breakfast is cancelled.

Sorry to be the one to ruin your lives, all you brekkyheads out there, but it’s time to end the world’s obsession with the first meal of the day. It is, in fact, the worst meal of the day – overpriced at cafes and underwhelming at home.

Any halfway enticing menu option can be made for a fraction of the price at home. However, that requires cooking, which, given its time consuming and overall boring nature, is on thin ice with me anyway. Who wants to cook first thing in the morning, only moments after being broken from the sweet respite of sleep, only to be reminded of the horror that is the world? It’s certainly no time to be cracking open eggs. Fruit is a bore, toast barely worth it and cereal is detestable. Whose stomach in the early hours of consciousness, can really cope with pancakes or waffles, which are, let’s face it, basically desserts?

While cooking is annoying it’s still better than eating out for breakfast. First of all, am I supposed to brush my teeth before I go out to eat or after? Either I’m going out with morning breath or I’m somehow brushing my teeth too late and either way it’s chaos.

The most passable breakfast option, which is not exactly a crowded field, is avocado on toast, and unfortunately that’s been co-opted into the culture wars. The boomers are mad they spent so long on porridge and jam, so they’ve made our millennial love for edible breakfast somehow linked to house prices. Typical.

Anyway, a café breakfast (even when adequate) is always disappointing. The avocado isn’t creamy and they’re always skimpy on the feta. It’s a maxim I hold dear that you can never have enough feta. The cafes are noisy and overcrowded and you have to get up early on the weekend. Not to mention you’re paying triple the price for something that you could make easily at home – and get leftovers for many more breakfasts in the future!

Don’t get me started on breakfast meetings – the most cursed of all work events. I hardly want to work, let alone having to get up early, then eat an awful meal followed by a full day at the office.

Really, the only good breakfast is a hot breakfast. Bacon, sausages, beans, eggs, hash browns – all that bad stuff. But eating meat is wrong and you’re not allowed to have beans and eggs every day (or at least your stomach hopes you won’t). McDonald’s breakfast is the king of all, the only acceptable breakfast to buy. But a lifetime of wonderful hotcakes and hash browns would doom your heart and waistline… although perhaps a shorter life with enjoyable breakfasts would be preferable to a longer existence full of early morning frustration?

Unfortunately, breakfast is kind of unavoidable. It’s better to start the day fed, of course, lest you grump and groan all morning. But when the options are all so dire, it’s hard to see a way out.

Here’s what I do. Nearly every weekday morning I have an apple, the best of all fruits and maybe a small liquid breakfast, like a protein shake. On the weekends maybe I’ll go for baked beans on a bagel, maybe Senaai will make us pancakes*. During the week all I need is something quick easy and enough to get me through until lunch.

Lunch! Now there’s a meal we can all get behind. Will it be a lovely sandwich? Sushi or maybe a specially priced curry? Burger and chips if you’re feeling naughty, or maybe even leftovers from last night? The opportunities for lunch are endless and none of them bad.

So the next time you feel like a fancy breakfast out and about stop yourself and think. Could I make this for cheaper and better at home? The answer is yes. So just do it. Put up with the hassle of cooking, safe in the knowledge that you’re avoiding regret at a café. And do something good with the money you saved and donate it to your local food bank. God knows there are people who need breakfast, any breakfast, more than you need a pitiful breakfast at an extortionate café.  

I hope to do away with breakfast altogether someday. I’ll have all the lunch and dinners in the world and can take or leave dessert. But, sadly, until the scientists give us meals in tablet form, we need breakfast. Even if the concept is a little undercooked.

*This may seem to undercut my whole argument. No, dear reader no. The best breakfast is the one my fiancé cooks at home – she is a genius in the kitchen. She makes pancakes to die for, works wonders with eggs and avocado and, best of all, lets me have as much feta as I want. Don’t get me wrong, while I’m marrying her for many reasons, her ability to make something good out of breakfast is not chief among them. But it is an added bonus. And, even better, Senaai’s breakfasts are just for me and her! Suck it, losers!