"Get up early, wash your face, brush your teeth. eat then get dressed and say goodbye to your parents quickly otherwise you'll be late going to school ~"
As far as I could recall, there was a song of the school or of the friends that describes the routines that children should do, despite the rush to school, it's still very important to have breakfast. And as far as I could recall once again, I don’t know since when my breakfast has been replaced by a cup of coffee as a daily routine.
Yes, we will talk about "The morning energy of life", as people these days tend to pay less attention to it because we are so busy. In the past, we learned in school about the principles of nutrition that we should consume 5 main groups of food, consisting of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals in the proportion that will produce energy in the morning after waking up to noon. But as we are now getting busier that we rush to travel to work, stuck in the traffic, buy quick dish from street vendors and some even eat their breakfast in the car, while some only have time for a cup of coffee. The point is why is the way we spend life is being more emphasized than the way of the quality of life should be. This is the question that we still need to find out.
We went to do a survey at 3 most populous locations in order to observe what do people consume.
Location 1: Under the Skytrain station - it is a crowded office spot for people to buy breakfast before going to work. Of course, there will be many street vendors selling various things ranging from omelette rice, sticky rice, grilled pork, sandwiches, up to a Thai traditional coffee. It was as though a relay race in which the vendors had put all these breakfast set in the box/bag and the buyer stopped by to pick their choices, pay money and walk out systematically – just like that.
Location 2: Hospital - we have high expectations for this location because it is a department that is concerned with health, nutrition and the need to take care of patients. Let’s not name the hospital though. When we walked in there, it gave us a good feeling as the food court is open from early morning from 6.00 hrs. There is a zone for people to have safe food to eat. There are no preservatives, no MSG. Strangely, we saw only few hospital staff eating here. But not until we walked to another side of the hospital and found out that majority of the hospital staff here are also the big fan of consuming street vending foods such as grilled pork, fried meatball, Thai traditional coffee, sticky rice and so on.
Location 3: University cafeteria - this one, we lower our expectations because we usually have the impression that university students mostly eat fast food, and using a fast pace of lifestyle. But when we arrived, we actually felt that this place offers a newly cooked food and fulfills the function of being cafeteria with a variety of food to choose from porridge, boiled rice, curry rice, up to noodle though there were some bubble tea and soft drinks. The atmosphere was very relaxing that it gave us the feeling that we could still have time to eat while being with ourselves with consciousness.
There are 2 key takeaways after that all sectors will need to work collaboratively after having observed the consumption trend of these 3 locations, namely the vendor should make safe food with the use of quality ingredients or choose to design menus according to customer groups by trying to complete the nutritional principles. Secondly, the customers also have to respect both the body and the quality of food that goes into their bodies.
When all related sectors actively cooperate and formulate rules in mind together to have quality breakfast/food, we truly believe that this is a marketing mechanism and a social mechanism that resonates with the source of raw materials producer in helping us creating safe raw materials without chemicals and antibiotics. We believe that when you wake up in the morning, your body should receive good things that are not contaminated food from the source mixed with pollutions in the streets. We deeply hope that this article will make many people try to look at their own breakfast, and be aware of what we are intaking. Think of the rice dishes at home in the morning, even though it may be a simple soup with fried eggs that do not look luxurious at all, but at least it is truly a breakfast that we should never forget.
Author
Nattaporn Pinpech
Creative / Story teller