The old saying goes “breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” at least that’s what our moms and the nutritionists spent years convincing us of. Yet feeding our kids a balanced breakfast during the craziness that is trying to get out of the house in the morning is still difficult for a lot of us parent. On my final trip relocating from Iowa to North Carolina, I started building my grocery list in my head not only to restock my refrigerator, but for planning summertime meals for my kids.

During the regular school months my son’s breakfast usually consists of a granola bar accompanied by some combination of two of the following: piece of fruit, applesauce, or yogurt. That seems to fill him up while sitting at his desk doing work until lunch at around 11:20am, but with a day full of activities and lots of outdoor time at camp during the summer, I’ve become skeptical/concerned that that’s enough to keep his energy up and belly full until lunchtime. Insert protein.

When I cook breakfast on the weekend, I typically prefer fresh breakfast sausage, but have occasionally purchased precooked, refrigerated breakfast sausage that brands like Jimmy Dean or Johnsonville produce. My kids love especially the maple-flavored links, and it only takes 30-45 seconds in the microwave to cook. I immediately concluded that this was an easy winner to incorporate some protein into my son’s summer breakfast diet, however what happened after is the following hypothesizing about where the other convenient breakfast (meat) proteins are.

I think we can all agree that pork owns breakfast when considering traditional meat protein; but have we let alternative products like cereals, yogurts, protein shakes and granola bars encroach on our protein share during the breakfast occasion?

It seems like amid the alternative meat craze, we may have forgotten about the other products that are capitalizing on protein messaging during alternative eating occasions.

The last great breakfast innovation I saw that encompassed a new way to include meat during the occasion were the Ore-Ida^™ brand ‘Just Crack An Egg^™’ bowls; and those came from a brand that is not meat focused.

Breakfast seems like an easy opportunity for us to grow share and further expand through either new product innovation, or more than anything through messaging to remind the consumer that adding natural protein in the form of wholesome meat products is a great start to the day.

If nothing else, putting a little emphasis on the breakfast occasion would further solidify (and perhaps grow) meat’s presence in this category before meat alternative products enter the space. And let’s face it – while alternative meat purveyors have initially been more focused on producing alternatives for the dinner occasion (i.e.: dinner sausages, brats and burgers), creating similar products like breakfast sausages would make the next most logical sense.

So, no matter if you are producing pork or chicken sausage, pork or turkey bacon, you better start thinking how to grow and secure that breakfast stronghold.

Protein and breakfast

Join for free* to continue reading.