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| A typical Dutch breakfast |
Dutch food experts strongly advise to start your day with a good breakfast full of cereals, some milk or a cup of tea or coffee. Breakfast is best enjoyed with your partner or family but if you are alone a newspaper is also good company.
In practice not many Dutch people will have or take the time to do it in the way food experts prefer. Most people like to stay in bed as long as possible, especially in the cold and dark winter days resulting in having only little time left to take a shower, getting dressed and eat breakfast. Most of the time the latter is skipped or combined with travel time in car or train.
To promote the fact that eating breakfast is an absolute necessity to have enough energy until lunch each year the Nationale Schoolontbijt is organized. This event focuses on school kids between 4 and 12 years old and their parents. It should show them the importance of eating healthy food as well as the social benefit one has when eating together. Thereby it should prevent kids from getting overweight.
Holidays are the best moments to enjoy breakfast in the way it should; bread which has just arrived from the bakery around the corner, fresh croissants and orange juice and some hot drink preferably served on a sunny terrace. But people spending their holiday in Italy might be disappointed about the possibilities offered by the hotels. Italians don’t really have a breakfast the way it is done in the Northern part of Europe. They rather start their day with a good cup of cappuccino and some sweet pastry.
Tomorrows’ blogpost will talk about coffee habits in both countries.
