People often, when talking about breakfast, say you need to get a ‘good’ start to the day. What does this ‘good’ mean? Are we talking healthy or hearty? And can healthy be hearty (and vice versa)? What a lot of questions so early on in the column. Well, today, as you may have already discerned, we will discuss these questions with great depth and vigour, with a particular emphasis on the whole healthy breakfast thing.

Now. I understand that a soup can be a meal. It’s a whole combination of things, which often has a potato base and a side of bread for dipping. (Curveball introduction to a paragraph, if there ever was one.) Plus, it has ingredients that you expect will be in a soup, like various vegetables, maybe the occasional chunk of meat or some floating fusilli. But smoothies are a whole other kettle of fish. The smoothie, while ostensibly ‘fruity’, contains ingredients that you don’t expect at all – like spinach, kale or protein powder things – the great enigma of the breakfast world. While the smoothie may contain mysterious depths, it is widely photographed, Instagrammed and publicised; popular culture gives the impression that this is the zenith of breakfast consumption.

“Although the priests and congregation at the time weren’t all faithful to their Nutri-bullets and personal banana smoothie recipes, this puts us in a rather tricky position in the present day, what with the defining feature of breakfast being that it breaks the fast.”

However, can the smoothie really be counted as a breakfast food? In 1662, Cardinal Francis Maria Brancaccio declared that “Liquidum non frangit jejunum” (‘Liquid doesn’t break the fast’). Although the priests and congregation at the time weren’t all faithful to their NutriBullets and personal banana smoothie recipes, this puts us in a rather tricky position in the present day, what with the defining feature of breakfast being that it breaks the fast, as demonstrated in the playful yet literal name: break-fast.

I suppose that also means that, if you’re trying to parade any other beverage – coffee or slightly fruitier counterparts – as a breakfast, then you’re not having ‘breakfast’ at all, merely an early morning refreshment, according to the Catholic definition. Healthy or otherwise, it just surely isn’t as fast-breaking as it should be.

On the other hand, the cousins of the smoothie – such as the acai or smoothie bowl – can be interpreted as breakfast due to the fact that their consistency allows them to be in a bowl rather than a glass and that often they have more solid things like granola or other fruit on top of them. They are like smoothies, but with a greater sense of reality, a more stable foundation and a different receptacle.

I shall continue this discussion, which has frankly just fallen into a discussion of whether something is solid, liquid or gas (P.S. not sure what the Cardinal’s stance was on the latter), with a rather peculiar but scientifically proven idea: eating chocolate for breakfast is good for you.

Hold your metaphorical Lindt reindeer! Shut the front door, Willy Wonka! (I have integrated some surprised phrases in order to articulate the emotions of those amazed by the previous statement, or to increase the level of drama for those who didn’t react sufficiently upon reading it. You’re welcome.) And before you dive into a glorious pool of Nesquik and Nutella, let me explain. In 2012, researchers in Tel Aviv found that by integrating a sweet element into the breakfast of an obese dieter’s calorific intake, the sample of dieters chosen were able to curb their cravings and avoid binging more effectively than those going cold turkey on sugar. Those who had a little bit of what they fancied of the cocoa variety at breakfast lost, on average, 40 pounds more per person than their peers doing a similar diet with a more restricted breakfast regime.

Rarely has the statement ‘the proof is in the pudding’ been quite as appropriate. So, if chocolate is what you need to start the day then go ahead, but only if your own personal breakfast-related mantra is everything in moderation rather than a start as you mean to go on kind of philosophy.

So, this demonstrates that ‘health’ can come in many different guises, from the evident to the counter-intuitive.

The Cereal Box: Granola

The favoured grain among the health-conscious, granola is sprinkled atop yoghurt, smoothies, love potions, you name it, as if it were some kind of gold dust. It enjoys a privileged status among the breakfast cereals. Many people who consume granola regularly would never consider descending to a spoonful of Coco Pops, Cookie Crisp, or even Cheerios. I think the eternal question rings true: why?

Is granola ‘good’ for you? It’s definitely not the Voldemort or Cruella de Vil of the breakfast sphere, but equally it’s not at all perfect. In fact, I would say that it’s the breakfast cereal that people believe is healthier than it actually is.

All of these stick-thin celebrities with glistening hair and gleaming abs all seem to sprinkle granola on their breakfast food and so we have all somehow been convinced of the fact that it is fine to eat.

But oh, how we’re all wrong. Having made my own granola in the past, I can confirm that it is a combination of oats, nuts, honey and sugar – there is no extract of divine assistance or unicorn dreams to make your hair shine and abs pop like the aforementioned celebs. People take it on hikes because you get so many calories from such a small amount. I don’t quite understand how it has managed to trick us all into believing it’s a ‘health’ food as, if you were to eat a normal-sized cereal bowl of granola, you’d have pretty much exhausted half of your calories for the day.

The Cereal Offender: Biscuits and gravy

Another thing that has intrigued me about granola is the phrase: ‘you’re so granola’. This is a phrase that was completely unfamiliar to me until recently, when my friend told me how he had been described as ‘so granola’ by some American students spending a term studying at my college.

I had heard about being ‘vanilla,’ but never ‘granola,’ and so my passion for this excellent breakfast food led me to believe that it was a way of singing someone’s highest praises. The Urban Dictionary quite quickly popped that balloon: ‘A hippy, minus the sex, drugs and rock & roll. (fun stuff) Hippy - fun = granola.’

‘Earthy crunchy, nature valley, au natural, plain jane, somewhat dirty and unkempt, and in need of a shower.’ This is not quite as fun as I had envisaged, but everyone certainly has a little granola within and if you want to be granola, you be granola!