For many people, breakfast — often called the most important meal of the day — is also the day's least-exciting meal. Breakfast choices frequently reflect utilitarian needs; foods at breakfast are typically simple, quick and easy to prepare and eat, and valued for the calorie boost that revives the body and brain after a night's rest. And when people find a breakfast option they like, they generally stick with it, day after day, scientists have found.

When researchers recently evaluated the daily eating habits in thousands of U.S. and French study subjects, they saw that people repeatedly ate the same thing for breakfast — and were happy to do so. By comparison, when those people sat down to lunch or dinner, they expected greater variety and wanted a more pleasurable experience from their meals.

Why were so many of those people satisfied with eating the same breakfast every morning? The scientists suggested that psychological, biological and cultural drivers shape our expectations for meals, and those factors — and our enthusiasm for eating — differ depending on the time of day. 

Why do you usually eat the same thing for breakfast?

When eating breakfast, most people seek utility — not pleasure.

 
 
 
 
 
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For many people, breakfast — often called the most important meal of the day — is also the day's least-exciting meal. Breakfast choices frequently reflect utilitarian needs; foods at breakfast are typically simple, quick and easy to prepare and eat, and valued for the calorie boost that revives the body and brain after a night's rest. And when people find a breakfast option they like, they generally stick with it, day after day, scientists have found.

When researchers recently evaluated the daily eating habits in thousands of U.S. and French study subjects, they saw that people repeatedly ate the same thing for breakfast — and were happy to do so. By comparison, when those people sat down to lunch or dinner, they expected greater variety and wanted a more pleasurable experience from their meals.

Why were so many of those people satisfied with eating the same breakfast every morning? The scientists suggested that psychological, biological and cultural drivers shape our expectations for meals, and those factors — and our enthusiasm for eating — differ depending on the time of day

Related: Can a person survive eating only beef?

Throughout the day and into the night, our bodies follow circadian rhythms. Nearly all forms of life adhere to these 24-hour cycles, which govern changes that are physical, mental and behavioral. For example, a typical sleep schedule in humans follows light-related circadian rhythms. Tens of thousands of neurons in the brain regulate this so-called biological clock so that we feel sleepy at nighttime when it's dark and are more alert when the sun is up during the daytime, according to the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences. 

Circadian rhythms also affect our eating schedules, and other researchers have previously investigated links between circadian rhythms and variations in the size and variety of meals that people eat throughout the day, according to a study published in the January 2022 issue of the journal Appetite.

For this investigation, the scientists questioned if psychological factors linked to circadian rhythms could also influence what people ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Those questions also interested the researchers because of their own breakfast habits, said lead study author Romain Cadario, an assistant professor in the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. 

"I'm a French person — I usually seek a lot of variety in the things that I eat; this is something that's valued by French gastronomic society," Cadario said. "At the same time, I ate the same breakfast every single day. So, my co-author and I started to talk about that pattern of behavior." (Cadario's typical breakfast is a cup of coffee and one piece of toast, he told Live Science. Study co-author Carey Morewedge, a professor in the Questrom School of Business at Boston University, has eaten the same breakfast for the past two years: coffee, toast with almond butter, "and an avocado, spinach, protein powder and banana smoothie," he wrote in Time magazine in December 2021.