From exclusive items to portion sizes, we wanted to find all the differences between breakfast foods in the US and the UK. This is “Food Wars.”
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00:00We're exploring all the differences
00:01between breakfast in the UK and the US.
00:04This is Food Wars.
00:06Obviously, portion sizes are difficult to quantify
00:08exactly because they vary wildly
00:10from restaurant to restaurant.
00:11We're starting with what we think
00:12are classic cooked breakfast plates from each country.
00:16This is the set one breakfast from our local cafe.
00:18For a classic American cooked breakfast,
00:20almost all diners will serve a two by two by two,
00:23which contains two eggs, two pieces of bacon,
00:26and two pancakes.
00:27It's typical in the UK for cafes to have a set menu,
00:29with pre-set breakfast options,
00:31and the set one is usually the most standard.
00:33This plate contains an egg, two pieces of bacon,
00:37a sausage, beans, and a fried slice.
00:40Yes, a fried slice is literally
00:41just a deep-fried slice of bread.
00:43It's delicious.
00:44Let's measure some of these ingredients
00:46to see what the differences are.
00:48Just over five.
00:49Eggs don't always look quite as flat as this.
00:53It's two-dimensional.
00:58We'll weigh the whole plate
00:59and then deduct maybe like 10 grams
01:01for the waste of the paper plate.
01:07Oh, yeah.
01:10We're deducting a pancake.
01:11We cheated.
01:13Also, one piece of bacon!
01:15So that entire breakfast plate
01:17comes out to 304 grams.
01:19Let's take a look at some breakfast cereal portion sizes,
01:21starting with Kellogg's Corn Flakes.
01:23The smallest one is this multi-pack 20-gram box.
01:26Then we have a 250-gram box, a 450-gram box,
01:29and our biggest size, a 1-kilogram box.
01:32You might also be able to find a 720-gram box,
01:35but we couldn't find it today.
01:36U.S. Corn Flakes also come in a range of sizes.
01:39We have the 9.6-ounce box, the 12-ounce box,
01:43the 18-ounce box, and the 24-ounce box.
01:46There's also a mega size, which is 25.2 ounces.
01:50In the U.S., we also have these little two-ounce cereal cups.
01:55These come in a lot of different kinds of cereal,
01:57but I couldn't find the Corn Flake one.
02:00Nobody actually likes those.
02:02I did find Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
02:04That's what that looks like.
02:05So that actually makes the U.K.'s largest size
02:0740% bigger than the U.S.'s.
02:09The only time we have a bigger portion size than America
02:12is when it's a healthy food, apparently.
02:13We can't have any fun.
02:14There is an interesting difference
02:16when it comes to recommended serving sizes
02:17in the two countries.
02:19In the U.S., the recommended serving size
02:20is 1 1⁄2 cups, which is 42 grams of Corn Flakes.
02:24The recommended serving size in the U.K. is just 30 grams,
02:27which is a 28% decrease compared to the U.S.
02:30That means that the recommended serving size
02:31is bigger than one of these.
02:33That's not even one portion.
02:34That also means that the largest U.S. box
02:36contains just 17 servings, while the U.K.'s contains 33.
02:40That's almost double the number of portions
02:42if we're sticking to Kellogg's recommended amounts.
02:45I'm gonna measure out 30 grams,
02:46because I'm kind of struggling to visualize
02:48what that actually looks like.
02:52I'm gonna be honest.
02:53That might be what they're recommending us,
02:54but that is not what I'm eating.
02:55I'm having probably double that, I would say.
03:00Crunchy.
03:01Let's measure out 42 grams of Corn Flakes.
03:08Here's what 42 grams of cereal looks like.
03:11I feel like this is a normal person's portion, for sure.
03:15When I eat cereal, it's all about how I'm feeling.
03:18Usually, it's probably twice the size of this.
03:21I just feel like cereal's the kind of food where I just eat a lot of it.
03:24This wouldn't do it for me, but it might do it for you.
03:27I don't know how I eat cereal out of my mixing bowls.
03:30Like, I don't eat it out of a normal people bowl.
03:33What about beverages?
03:34Well, in the U.K., you can get Tropicana orange juice,
03:36and the biggest size is 1.5 liters.
03:39I didn't get it today.
03:40I'm sorry, I forgot.
03:41In the U.S., our largest Tropicana size is 128 fluid ounces.
03:45That's about 2.3 of this size.
03:48Team no pulp, but I am kind of team some pulp sometimes.
03:53You know, I'm feeling a little crazy, a little kooky.
03:56First, we wanted to compare a couple of familiar options in both countries,
04:00because some of them actually have surprising differences.
04:03The first thing I want to talk about is bacon.
04:05Joe's always moaning about U.K. bacon,
04:07so I did some research and dug up some pretty interesting stuff.
04:09I'm not impressed with your bacon here, guys.
04:11I'm not impr- look, look at-
04:15What American? How weird this is.
04:18Yeah, like-
04:20This is a standard U.K. bacon rasher.
04:22The most commonly eaten type of bacon in the U.K. is back bacon,
04:25which is identifiable by its shape.
04:27You get the thick piece of pork at the top with a fatty tail at the end.
04:30Typically, our bacon is simply cured in a salted mixture
04:33and can often be smoked with British woods like oak.
04:35We do also have streaky bacon,
04:37which more closely resembles the shape of American bacon,
04:39but is still quite different.
04:41Bacon in the U.S. will almost always look like this.
04:43Very thin piece of pork, fatty,
04:47usually has some crisp to it.
04:49It depends on how you like it cooked,
04:51but if you order bacon here, this is what you're getting.
04:53U.S. bacon is cut from a cured slab of pork belly.
04:56Usually, it'll be smoked with either applewood or hickory
05:00to add that smoky bacon flavor.
05:03We cut our bacon from the pork loin,
05:04which is located on the back of the pig, hence the name back bacon.
05:08The loin is a much less fatty cut of meat when compared to the belly.
05:11This means that when it's cooked, less fat renders out of U.K. bacon,
05:14and it doesn't crisp up as much as American bacon tends to.
05:17If there are any U.K.-based Americans watching this who miss American bacon,
05:20you can either seek out a butcher who is curing pork belly,
05:23or maybe just fry your back bacon in a bit more oil than you usually would.
05:27That explains it.
05:28I was always wondering what was going on with the U.K. bacon.
05:30Let's talk about eggs.
05:32It doesn't smell good in here.
05:34When you order breakfast at a U.S. diner,
05:36they will always ask you how you want your eggs.
05:38So you can get them scrambled, poached, boiled, fried.
05:42If you want them fried, usually there's a list of ways you can get them fried.
05:46So you can get them sunny side up, over easy, over medium, or over hard.
05:51They all mean something different.
05:53All of those options refer to whether you want your eggs flipped,
05:56plus how much you want the yolk to be cooked.
05:58Sunny side up eggs are not flipped,
06:00meaning that the whites on top could be a little bit runny,
06:03and so will the yolk.
06:04The yolk is, for the most part, uncooked.
06:06Over easy eggs are flipped near the end to ensure that the whites are
06:10pretty much fully cooked on both sides,
06:12but the yolk should still be runny when you break into it.
06:14Over medium and over hard are also flipped,
06:17but they're cooked for longer, so the yolk is going to be more solid.
06:20We have two of those options here,
06:22a sunny side up egg and two over easy eggs.
06:25If you go to a greasy spoon and you order a breakfast containing eggs in the U.K.,
06:28you will almost never be asked how you want them.
06:30By default, they will just be served sunny side up or maybe over easy.
06:33I think this one might have been flipped.
06:35They will serve you other types of egg if you ask.
06:37That could be poached, that could be a cooked through egg,
06:40or they will be scrambled as well.
06:41I do also just want to point out that we got some scrambled eggs as a side for this one,
06:46and this is how they came.
06:49It's so sad.
06:50Yeah, I do a pretty good scrambled egg.
06:51I prefer the like French style, like a wet scramble, a nice goopy scramble.
06:58Sausage is another common item on a full English breakfast.
07:00Typically, these will be thick pork sausages,
07:02either in the style of a Lincolnshire sausage or maybe a Cumberland.
07:05That said, greasy spoon cafe sausages are typically this kind.
07:09Typically, I'd say the greasy spoon sausages are straighter and longer
07:12than a Lincolnshire or a Cumberland might be,
07:14and they also have this kind of signature tough casing.
07:17Sausages in the U.K. are typically coarsely ground pork,
07:20and they'll be seasoned simply with things like salt, black pepper,
07:23maybe some sage and onion as well.
07:25Sausage is common in a U.S. breakfast too,
07:28although our links tend to be smaller than a U.K. sausage.
07:31It looks like cooked little fingers.
07:36These are also pork-based, but tend to be flavored with more ingredients,
07:39like brown sugar, garlic powder, and paprika,
07:42so it gives you a smokier, sweeter kind of sausage.
07:45Here are a range of breakfast foods from the U.K. not commonly eaten in the U.S.
07:49Here are all of the breakfast foods from the U.S. that aren't as common in the U.K.
07:54We're going to break all of these down into categories,
07:56starting with all of the cooked breakfast items that you might find at an American diner.
08:00Let's start with an American classic, pancakes.
08:04These are pretty much on every single diner menu in the U.S.
08:08I'd be very surprised to find a diner that didn't serve pancakes.
08:12This is very often served as a part of a breakfast plate that includes a whole bunch of sides,
08:18so like bacon, sausage, eggs, sometimes home fries.
08:21They also tend to come with some butter and maple syrup.
08:26Our pancakes are thick and fluffy due to the ratio of wet versus dry ingredients,
08:30but also due to the inclusion of baking powder or buttermilk,
08:34which helps the pancakes rise as they cook.
08:36I love a pancake. I'm 100% team pancake versus waffle.
08:41It's just, it's so good. It's so good every time.
08:44Even, like, an okay pancake is better than the best waffle, in my opinion.
08:49In my opinion. I'm going to get so booed. I'm going to get booed.
08:53Those are totally different to British pancakes.
08:55Ours tend to be much more like the crepe style that you might find in France.
08:59Eggs, milk and flour, pancake power.
09:03Sorry.
09:04Eggs, milk and flour, pancake power.
09:07There are a few rare occasions where you might see pancakes on breakfast menus in the UK,
09:11although they are typically included in more American-style breakfasts,
09:14or maybe it's like a fancy brunch option.
09:16The closest actually British equivalent is probably the scotch pancake.
09:20You'll also see waffles at US diners a lot.
09:23This is like pancakes' arch nemesis, okay?
09:26The ingredients are almost identical, but waffles are made in a waffle maker,
09:30which helps them cook throughout with crispy edges.
09:33Everyone likes the pools that you can build with syrup because of all those edges.
09:37I think British people will pretty much only ever see waffles as a part of a dessert menu.
09:43I tend to agree, okay?
09:45That's part of the reason why I'm not that into waffles.
09:47I feel like we do too much with waffles here.
09:49I don't need chocolate, sprinkles, whipped cream.
09:52I don't need that.
09:53I just woke up.
09:54I want breakfast and I want a pancake.
09:57Enough of those American desserts masquerading as breakfast foods.
09:59It's time for some classic British breakfast staples.
10:02This is black pudding.
10:03When Americans hear the word pudding,
10:05they often think of like a custardy dessert, like an angel delight,
10:08but this is anything but.
10:09Black pudding has existed in many cultures and many forms
10:12for centuries.
10:13But the rough idea is that you take the blood from an animal,
10:16you cook it down with things like oats and other things to absorb it,
10:19and then form it into a sausage, a thick log of blood.
10:24Delicious.
10:29It's just one of those, like, they need better marketing.
10:31On paper, yeah, it's a little bit weird, but it's really tasty.
10:35I'm not weirded out by black pudding.
10:37I've had it before.
10:38I thought it tasted fine, but I definitely don't prefer it to a regular sausage link.
10:44I will say that the names of a lot of breakfast items in the UK
10:49mislead my brain all the time, like black pudding, bubble and squeak.
10:54Now let's talk potatoes.
10:56Let's start with the hash brown.
10:57In the US, hash brown means a couple different things.
11:00So you can get a hash brown that's like this one from McDonald's,
11:03that's pre-shaped. These are a lot less common at diners.
11:07I feel like what they usually have at diners is more of like hash browns
11:12that are grated.
11:13If we were anywhere near a Waffle House, I would totally get some and show you,
11:17but we don't have one, but this is what it looks like.
11:21So delicious.
11:22We do have hash browns in the UK, but they're pretty much always the fast food style,
11:26pre-shaped and deep fried ones.
11:28The most common ones are in this triangle shape for some reason.
11:30I'm not sure exactly why. I imagine they're just the cheap ones that you find at wholesalers.
11:35I personally love them on a breakfast plate.
11:36I do think they are a great addition to a fry up or a full English.
11:39If we're talking potato on a British fry up,
11:41I'd be remiss not to mention bubble and squeak.
11:43This is a very traditional fry up dish in the UK.
11:45It actually originated as a way to use up leftovers from dinner the night before.
11:49Typically, it would feature potato and maybe some other vegetables,
11:52which were then mashed together and fried in a pan.
11:54Over time, it became so widespread that it just became a breakfast staple in its own right.
11:58The name comes from the noise that the dense mixture would make
12:01as it bubbled and squeaked away as it cooked in a frying pan.
12:04All the Food Tours fans know that the first time I ever had bubble and squeak was in fact
12:08during our English breakfast episode, and I have to say, I think it's great.
12:12I'm not quite sure why it's not popular here in the US.
12:16To be honest, it's not too far from some hash browns I've had
12:19mixed up with the potatoes and some vegetables, onion.
12:22From what I remember, it was cooked in a block and you were sectioning it off like sheet cake
12:29and throwing it on there, right?
12:30Anyway, bubble and squeak, I am a fan.
12:32If you're going to the UK, try it.
12:34Another side potato option you'll see a lot in the US is home fries.
12:39Home fries are diced potato cubes that get parboiled and sauteed in a frying pan.
12:44Usually, when you cook it like that, it gives you a crispy outside and a fluffy texture inside.
12:49Home fries are not my preferred way of eating potatoes at breakfast, but these smell pretty good.
13:00It's just not fun. There's no fun in eating these potatoes for breakfast.
13:04One last thing, which is more of a question for my fellow Brits.
13:06Do chips belong on a full English?
13:08Chips are something that you see on a lot of breakfast menus in the UK,
13:11but I do feel like having them on or as part of a full English is still quite controversial among Brits.
13:16There are some other cooked breakfast staples in the UK that might seem a bit strange to Americans.
13:20If you order a full English at a cafe, you can often expect to find grilled mushrooms
13:23and grilled tomato as part of your plate.
13:25I would say the most common form of the tomato is just halved and grilled.
13:29I will say the quality of both the tomatoes and the mushrooms can vary wildly depending on the cafe you're in.
13:34This is an American breakfast option that I've never seen in the UK.
13:38I don't think you guys have this normally, but it's steak and eggs.
13:43Steak and eggs is pretty much on every single diner menu.
13:46This is a terrible representation of what steak and eggs actually looks like.
13:50There are great steak and eggs at certain diners, but this cut of meat just looks scary.
13:57I'm not sure that this is from a cow.
14:06This is like the last thing I want for breakfast.
14:08I don't understand.
14:09This actually began as an Australian staple until World War II exposed American troops to this dish
14:15and they fell in love with it.
14:16They liked that it had a lot of protein and it really skyrocketed in popularity back home after the war.
14:22I just feel like this is too much for me personally to start my day with, so I would never order it.
14:28If we're talking about UK breakfast foods, I of course have to mention baked beans.
14:32Baked beans actually originated in the US, but have now become very much a UK breakfast staple.
14:37It's not 100% clear how beans became a breakfast food in the UK.
14:40Heinz claims that it invented beans on toast as part of a marketing campaign in 1927.
14:45The popularity of baked beans was then cemented by World War II in the UK,
14:49when the British Ministry of Food classed them as an essential food and exempted them from rationing.
14:53As a cheap and easy source of protein and vitamins, they quickly became a staple of British cuisine.
14:58It is worth pointing out that British baked beans are very different to the baked beans found in the US.
15:02Ours are cooked in a sweet tomato-based sauce with herbs and spices.
15:05I can only do...
15:10I will say for me like beans on toast maybe isn't also a breakfast food.
15:13Beans is part of a full English, yes.
15:15Beans on toast for me is like a lunch food or a very lazy dinner food.
15:20I usually go Heinz beans.
15:21I know people feel passionately about beans.
15:24If I need to convert to Branston, let me know in the comments.
15:27When you say baked beans in America, I would say this is what we think of.
15:33These are usually something that I see a lot at barbecues, franken beans, you know that whole
15:40situation, but it's not common to take these beans and just slap them on toast for breakfast.
15:45Obviously both countries eat toast for breakfast, but the toppings definitely vary.
15:50I feel like in America our toppings tend to lean sweeter, where in the UK they're more savory.
15:55One example of our sweet toast toppings is fruit jelly.
15:59I feel like it's super common to see those little packets of jelly
16:02whenever you order toast at a diner or something.
16:05I'm more of a buttered toast person, but it is common to see people put
16:09jelly on their toast.
16:11Not as common in the UK.
16:12In the UK it's much more common to find jam.
16:15The main difference is that jelly is made with fruit juice,
16:17while jam is made with actual pieces of fruit.
16:20Popular UK options include strawberry, raspberry, blackcurrant, and we also like marmalade as well.
16:25If I'm having jam on toast, I'm also putting butter on there beforehand.
16:28I don't know if that's super common in America.
16:30I feel like you guys tend to just go for the jam without the butter in that case.
16:33So like for me, the ideal slice of jam and toast is the jam on toast that they have in Wallace and Gromit.
16:40I do also find that the cheap jam like this one is good for my ideal spreading.
16:47It's a bit more homogenous.
16:48You can get a nice even layer.
16:50The most popular jelly options in the US are definitely strawberry and grape.
16:55You don't tend to find blackcurrant products in the US.
16:58In the late 19th century, pathologists found that blackcurrants carried a fungus that destroyed pine
17:03trees, the backbone of the American timber industry.
17:06So this led to the government banning them completely.
17:08Our version of that is that we really don't have many grape flavored products in the UK.
17:12If you see something purple, it's almost always going to be blackcurrant or maybe blackberry.
17:16Before we move on from toast, I also have to shout out my beloved Marmite.
17:19This is a divisive spread in the UK.
17:21For a long time, possibly still, their motto was you either love it or you hate it.
17:25That's become so ingrained in British culture that if a topic or something else is divisive,
17:29people will describe it as a Marmite topic.
17:31Joe Avella from Food Wars, bit Marmite.
17:35It's another one that's a bit like black pudding in the sense where if you actually think too much about
17:38how it's made, it's off-putting.
17:40It's called yeast extract and it's effectively the kind of sludge that is left over from when
17:45you brew beer.
17:46It's delicious.
17:46I personally love it, always have, always will.
17:49Here we have some crumpets as well as some English muffins, or as we call them, muffins.
17:53The two of them do share a couple of similarities, but it kind of begins and ends with the fact that
17:57they are both yeasted, bready products which are cooked on a hot plate.
18:00With muffins, the dough is shaped into a ball before being grilled on both sides.
18:04Crumpets are made with pretty similar ingredients, but the liquid ratio is higher,
18:08so you end up with something more like a batter rather than a dough.
18:10This gets poured onto a preheated surface, which is actually at a hotter temperature
18:14than a muffin bake would be.
18:15That means that it immediately sets on the bottom and forms a crust.
18:18They're also not flipped during the cooking process, so as it cooks,
18:22bubbles are formed, CO2 is released, rising up through the muffin, releasing in the top,
18:27producing these little air holes.
18:28Not only are they visually different from muffins, but they also have a much chewier texture.
18:32As a Brit, one of the best feelings you can experience is spreading
18:35lots of butter onto a freshly toasted crumpet, watching it all kind of melt into the holes,
18:40pour out the bottom. It's just wonderful. They're so tasty.
18:43Let's talk about doughnuts. These are an iconic U.S. breakfast food,
18:47but that hasn't always been the case. They were introduced to the U.S. by Dutch pilgrims,
18:52but were always considered more of a snack or a dessert.
18:54That all changed in the 1940s and 50s. The invention of doughnut machines in the 1930s made
19:00making doughnuts super easy and led to more and more doughnut shops opening across the U.S.
19:04The rise of the doughnut went hand in hand with coffee. Americans wanted to start their day with
19:10a cup of coffee, which was often sold at bakeries and increasingly doughnut stores.
19:14Even now, if you go to a grocery store here and buy a pack of coffee, you'll see the flavor
19:20doughnut shop coffee. It's definitely become a thing.
19:23Doughnuts are not an everyday thing, and you can obviously have them at any time of the day,
19:28but I do still see these as a breakfast pastry.
19:32To me, doughnuts are like the perfect amount of something sweet for a breakfast item.
19:39When we get into the territory of adding candy, chocolate, all sorts of stuff on like a waffle,
19:46a pancake, that's too much to me. This is like the limit of how sweet a breakfast should be.
19:51Don't get me wrong. I love doughnuts, and I'm sad that they're not a more acceptable
19:54anytime food in the UK, but I feel like objectively speaking,
19:57they are just not a breakfast food. If you're getting a breakfast pastry in the UK,
20:00it's much more likely to be a croissant or something in that vein. Shout out particularly
20:04to the Tesco chocolate-filled croissants. I love those things.
20:07Maybe when it comes to something qualifying as a breakfast pastry in the US and the UK,
20:10the presence of icing might be the distinguishing factor.
20:13I should probably also mention toaster pastries, the most famous obviously being Pop-Tarts.
20:18We also have toaster strudels or similar options like that in American grocery stores.
20:23We actually did a Pop-Tarts episode a while ago. Pop-Tarts fall into this weird gray area
20:29where the marketing is very focused on them being a quick and easy breakfast food,
20:34but nowhere on the packaging does it actually say it's for breakfast or mention breakfast at all.
20:42We do have Pop-Tarts in the UK, they're just not that popular.
20:44Firstly, they're seen as an American import, which lets supermarkets charge over the odds for them.
20:48Also in the UK, cereals are supposed to be more nutritionally complete, so they also kind of miss out on that as well.
20:54What about breakfast cereals? Obviously, there are a ton of options in both countries,
20:58particularly in the US. We love our cereal.
21:02So let's talk about our most popular cereal options in the US and the UK and compare them.
21:08We have some shredded wheat, Weetabix, Kellogg's Crunchy Nut, Shreddies, and Honey Cheerios.
21:14The gang is split here. We're pretty sure that at some point we did have Honey Nut Cheerios,
21:18we're not sure when that stopped being the case.
21:21A report from Wishlisted says that the top five US breakfast cereals are
21:25Honey Nut Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds,
21:30Special K Red Berries, and Frosted Flakes.
21:32In the UK, as you can see, the emphasis on cereals really is about their whole grain content and their fiber.
21:37There's a lot of just wheat ingredients, whole grain wheat, 100%.
21:43That's literally 100% wheat.
21:45I feel like this is a pretty well-rounded list.
21:48I'm not surprised by anything because this seems pretty typical to me.
21:53I think that Lucky Charms, Cap'n Crunch, those more sweet cereals tend to be more for kids.
21:59Like, I indulge every now and then as an adult, but I'm not buying them consistently.
22:05Maybe it's just me.
22:07I do think that Honey Nut Cheerios being number one makes the most sense.
22:10It's the least offensive cereal and so delicious.
22:14I think once you become an adult, you focus more on the health-conscious cereals,
22:19like a Honey Nut Cheerios, which their whole thing is that it's heart healthy.
22:23Let's try some Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
22:25I've had it a million times, but I think this is more of the cereal that people tend to imagine.
22:30A sugary, delicious American breakfast cereal with cinnamon sugar in every bite.
22:36It's so good.
22:40This is the kind of cereal that you can dry fist into your mouth or eat with milk,
22:45like a normal person, and it's going to be good every time.
22:47Cereal has gotten worse in the UK, I think.
22:50Even from the time when I was a kid, Golden Nuggets are the example of this.
22:53I had Golden Nuggets as a kid.
22:55They were like bright yellow, full of E numbers, delicious.
22:59And now it's just kind of balls of very dull, pale-ish wheat, I think, or corn or whatever.
23:06Also, I don't remember the last time I saw a little plastic toy in the cereal either.
23:10That was so good as a kid.
23:11Why don't we do that anymore?
23:12Delicious microplastics.
23:14I don't know what this is about me because I also love fast food.
23:16I love aggressively flavored things.
23:18But there's something about just like plain Weetabix with milk that I really love.
23:22A lot of people will add sugar to this maybe at home.
23:25On the package, you'll often see them adding like berries and stuff that I've never done that.
23:28I just really like the taste of wheat for some reason.
23:31The crew has asked if I can eat a whole Weetabix dry.
23:35I don't want to, but I guess I can try.
23:38It does look very dry.
23:39These do require milk usually.
23:41Let's give it a go.
23:52This is actually just soda.
23:55Oh man, yeah, I'm going to taste the moisture out here.
23:58It's not the most pleasant thing I've ever done, but not the least either.
24:14I do not enjoy sweet cereals.
24:15I have not liked them ever.
24:17Even as a kid, they'd always give me stomach problems in the morning.
24:20I almost never have sweet cereal.
24:22If I was to have a sweet US-style cereal, it wouldn't be for breakfast.
24:27I'd maybe have it later in the day as a snack.
24:29I like Apple Jacks.
24:30Really like Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
24:32And oddly enough, do a 180.
24:34I strangely enjoy Wheaties.
24:38The not-sweetest cereal, maybe because it's one of the few cereals I can actually hold down
24:42in the morning that didn't hurt my stomach because it wasn't coated in sugar.
24:44But in general, I never have sweet cereal in the morning or ever.
24:50I'm a coffee and banana guy all the way.
24:52Finally, every breakfast needs a beverage.
24:54And in the UK, that's most likely going to be tea.
24:56The most common is English breakfast tea.
24:58It's a black tea made with a mixture of leaves, including Assam, Salon, and Kenyan teas.
25:03Legend says that the blend was given its name and popularized by Queen Victoria.
25:06She was served it, somewhat ironically, by a Scottish tea master called Drysdale
25:10on one of her visits to Balmoral Castle.
25:12Brits reportedly consume 100 million cups of tea per day.
25:16Bearing in mind, our population is only 67 million.
25:19That means on average, Brits are consuming 1.49 cups a day per person.
25:23That's nothing.
25:24America is a nation of coffee drinkers.
25:26We love our coffee.
25:28A 2024 survey from the National Coffee Association
25:31found that American adults drink nearly 465 million cups of coffee every single day.
25:38I'm responsible for most of that.
25:39If you shrink that down to just the adult population, which is around 271 million people,
25:47that comes out to about 1.7 cups of coffee per person every day.
25:51America's most popular coffee is drip coffee, but in recent years,
25:55we've seen a rise in popularity with espresso-based drinks like lattes.
25:59In America, we are definitely more into coffee than tea, but we also are into iced drinks.
26:06Iced lattes, iced coffees are just so much more popular here, I think.
26:10In the UK, you won't find a lot of drip coffee.
26:12We typically go for espresso drinks, with the latte being our number one choice.
26:16Filling out the top three are the cappuccino and the flat white.
26:19The flat white has really picked up steam, pun intended, in the UK as of late.
26:23I really am loyal to tea.
26:24I think personally, I'm doing like four or five cups of tea per day,
26:28so I'm really bringing the average up in the UK if anything.
26:30If coffee isn't your thing, maybe fruit juice is.
26:33The most popular juice option in the US is, of course, orange juice.
26:39We do have other pretty popular fruit juices for breakfast, like grapefruit,
26:42sometimes apple, but orange seems to be the go-to for most people.
26:47Orange juice also reigns supreme in the UK, by quite a margin, actually.
26:50Beyond orange juice, apple juice is pretty popular here in the UK,
26:53as well as blended options, like a tropical juice or maybe like an orange and mango.
26:57Obviously, we haven't covered everything, as breakfast encompasses a lot of things,
27:00including loads of regional specialities.
27:02If you want another episode covering some more niche or regional dishes,
27:05then just let us know in the comments.
27:06Some classic breakfast components in the US and the UK are actually very different.
27:10It might shock some Americans to learn that British supermarkets don't refrigerate their eggs.
27:14In the US, you'll always find eggs in the refrigerated section of a store,
27:17alongside things like butter and milk.
27:19It comes down to the different ways the countries try to stop the spread of bacteria,
27:22like salmonella.
27:23In general, British and EU farming standards for eggs are higher than the equivalent standards in the US.
27:28Battery farming was effectively banned in the EU in 2012 and was replaced by enriched cage farming.
27:34United egg producers set out some minimum chicken welfare requirements for US chicken farmers.
27:39One key regulation for egg farming is the amount of space given per hen,
27:43as this can significantly reduce the welfare of the hen.
27:46The US minimum space per caged hen is 67 square inches.
27:50UK enriched chicken cages must provide 750 centimeters squared of space per bird.
27:55That's 73% more than the US standard.
27:58Less room to move around means a higher contamination risk when it comes to the eggs
28:02chickens are laying.
28:02To mitigate this, American eggs are often washed and sprayed with a chemical sanitizer
28:07before being shipped out and sold to the public.
28:09Spraying the shells can actually provide moisture for more bacteria to grow and spread.
28:14Keeping the eggs cold reduces that risk, which is why American eggs have to be refrigerated.
28:19In the UK, the focus is more on treating diseases at the source,
28:22rather than eliminating symptoms down the line.
28:24In addition to the extra space given to the hens when compared to the US,
28:27British hens are also vaccinated against salmonella.
28:30All these additional precautions mean that the eggs do not need to be cleaned
28:32before they're shipped out and are therefore safe to be kept at room temperature.
28:36Did you know that cereal has a bizarre origin story?
28:38Or that America's aversion to tea was kickstarted by the Revolutionary War?
28:42That's right. Breakfast is the source of some bizarre and fascinating history.
28:46Let's start with the cereal thing though, because it's wild.
28:50It all started back in the late 1800s.
28:52People would visit sanitariums to seek help with all sorts of health problems,
28:55kind of like old school health retreats.
28:57One such sanitarium, the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, was owned by a John Harvey Kellogg.
29:02John Kellogg was an interesting guy. He was a Seventh-day Adventist Christian,
29:06a denomination that believes in the imminent second coming of Christ.
29:10Many Seventh-day Adventists believe that when Jesus returns, there will be a rapture,
29:15and only the most pure will be spared, leading them to chase spiritual and physical purity.
29:20What did purity mean to John Kellogg?
29:22Well, it was mostly just denying yourself any form of pleasure whatsoever.
29:25He wrote a book in 1887 called Plain Facts for Old and Young.
29:29He placed particular emphasis on sexual practices, notably masturbation,
29:33which he described as the most dangerous of all sexual abuses.
29:36Kellogg believed that one way to stave off impure thoughts and actions was through your diet.
29:41He claimed that you could nip your urges in the bud by eating unstimulating foods,
29:46like vegetables, oatmeal, and graham flour.
29:49It was graham flour in particular that would go on to be significant.
29:52Guests at Battle Creek Sanitarium were often served a twice-baked graham flour mixture
29:56as part of their breakfast. It was so tough that a guest reportedly once broke her tooth on it,
30:00so people started serving it in milk to make it more edible.
30:03It wasn't until a few years later that John, his wife Ella, and younger brother Will really struck gold.
30:07When experimenting with new ways to make granola, they discovered that by leaving a wheat dough to dry
30:12overnight before rolling it out and baking it produced light crispy flakes.
30:16At this point, it actually grew in popularity and Kellogg began marketing it as granula.
30:21He ran into an issue as a similar product already existed invented by a man named James Caleb Jackson,
30:28who had used the same name. They patented the method and sold the new wheat flakes as granos
30:33before using corn instead of wheat around 1898 to create what we know now as cornflakes.
30:38Will Kellogg saw how popular the new cereal had become.
30:41He wanted to distribute it nationwide as well as adding things like salt and sugar to make it more
30:45tasty. Being the Puritan he was, John refused. However, Will was eventually able to persuade John
30:50to give up the rights to cornflakes. He started his own company, the Battle Creek Toasted Cornflake
30:54Company, in order to produce and distribute them. This eventually became the Kellogg Company in 1922.
30:59It's safe to say that John would be spinning in his grave if he saw what his boring, bland,
31:05spiritually pure breakfast food had become today.
31:07Hey Nico, why don't Americans drink tea like we do?
31:10It's clearly the superior beverage.
31:11A lot of the tea-coffee divide can actually be traced back to the American Revolutionary War.
31:16As tensions rose between the British government and the American colonies,
31:20tea became a symbol of what the settlers believed to be unfair taxation.
31:23This culminated with the famous Boston Tea Party of December 1773,
31:28where revolutionaries dumped 342 crates of tea into the Boston Harbor in protest.
31:33Tea became such a symbol of British influence that eventual founding father, John Adams,
31:37wrote in a letter to his wife in 1774 that tea must be universally renounced.
31:43And he was right. Coffee's better.
31:45Many Americans simply replaced tea with coffee,
31:47and even after America cemented its independence from Britain, this change stuck.
31:52It stuck real hard, because we're coffee drinkers for life over here, pretty much.
31:56I don't eat breakfast every day. I feel like I really have to commit to getting up early if I want to give
32:07myself a hearty enough breakfast. I do think it is the most important meal of the day. Don't get me wrong.
32:14I feel like breakfast is the thing that keeps you going when your brain is like most active in the
32:19morning, so you should be treating it like the most important meal every day. Don't be like me.
32:23Personally speaking, I don't eat breakfast every day. Before I went to school, I always would,
32:28but now I have to actually fend for myself. The thought of waking up a bit early to have like a
32:32bowl of cereal or some toast, sacrificing those crucial extra minutes in bed, for me, not quite
32:37worth it. I might be slightly biased because I don't eat it every day, but I'm not sure I believe with that
32:41old adage that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. There is a huge difference when it
32:46comes to breakfast at home and breakfast at like a diner, at least for me. At home, my ideal plate of
32:53breakfast looks something like maybe a bowl of oatmeal, side of turkey bacon, black coffee, very
33:00minimal, low effort stuff. But going out, you have the freedom to choose whatever you want because
33:05you're not cooking it. So I would get pancakes. I would get hash browns. I would definitely get sausage and bacon,
33:12for sure. Maybe even an egg. I usually skip eggs. I don't know. I get weird about them, but I'm
33:18definitely ordering way more for breakfast if I'm out versus cooking at home. One thing I can't believe
33:24we haven't talked about at all yet is bagels. That's another thing that I feel like is so popular to have
33:29for breakfast here. A little breakfast bagel with whatever cream cheese you can imagine. If you're into
33:34sweets, they have like dessert-y cream cheeses, savory. There's endless options. Bagels. Ideal breakfast.
33:42I think my ideal breakfast is kind of just a full English. Not that I would eat it every day,
33:46but in terms of the pound for pound satisfaction I get from eating it, I do think a full English is
33:51hard to beat. On a full English plate for me, you definitely have to have the bacon,
33:54you have to have the sausage, you have to have the beans, and some nicely done fried eggs. All of that
33:59with a big mug of tea on the side. I'm set. Having now been to the US a few times, one thing I do
34:03actually like about America is the diner culture. It's not a direct comparison to a British greasy spoon,
34:09but I do like a diner in its own right. Maybe for me it's less the specific foods and more the kind
34:14of diner culture, particularly the 24-hour thing. I do like the fact that you can go to a diner
34:17pretty much any time of day, get a nice cooked breakfast. It's great. If I could steal any breakfast
34:23item from the UK and make it popular here, it would probably be a crumpet with some of that black
34:29currant jam. A lot of our jams and jellies have a lot of sugar content in them, so they're not really
34:35like the most fresh tasting fruit item. I would be really interested to see what a black currant
34:41jam tastes like on a crumpet. There are a few breakfast items from the UK that I take issue
34:46with for sure, but I feel like it's more personal preference than anything. I'm not that into
34:51tomatoes for breakfast, not that into mushrooms, not super into cabbage or blood sausage, so if it's
34:58working for you guys, I'm so happy for you. In general, I do think America needs to dial it back slightly
35:04on the sweet goods for breakfast. There's basically no nutritional value there. You're getting all
35:08these easily digestible sugars, which just go straight through your body and leave you even
35:12hungrier afterwards. I do think the idea of breakfast has changed in my life since I was a child
35:19to now being an adult. I feel like sugar was the main thing I wanted as a kid, so all of the foods I
35:25ate at that time were very sugar heavy. Pop-Tarts, Lucky Charms, Eggo waffles, all of that. Nowadays,
35:33it's more about giving me the fuel that I need to stay awake until lunchtime, so I'm more interested
35:39in stuff that's going to keep me fuller for longer. The crew is finding the idea of a straight long
35:45sausage very funny. These are often, I would say, longer and straighter than a Cumberland or a
35:50Lincolnshire might be, till he's stopped.