Breakfast
There is a fictional story that every morning at breakfast TR ate a dozen eggs and a pound of bacon.
A pound of cooked bacon is approximately 2,200 calories and 12 small to medium size eggs amount to about 800 calories. All in all that would mean TR’s daily caloric intake would be around 3,000 calories from these two items alone.
In one year TR would go from 185lbs to 310lbs.
He’d gain 10lbs every month.
Truth is, at the turn of the 20th century a light breakfast was the norm in America. Most people had coffee, a roll, and maybe some cereal.
Large breakfast wouldn't start until after 1920 when marketing genius Edward Bernays convinced Americas that bacon and eggs are the quintessential American breakfast. He was hired by farmers to increase sales of bacon and eggs.
Bernays commissioned a doctor to ask thousands of other doctors if a larger breakfast was healthier. 4,500 doctors agreed, and Bernays sent the results to newspapers with headlines "4,500 physicians urge Americans to eat heavy breakfasts to improve their health". The press ran with the story, accompanied by images of bacon and eggs, The campaign helped make bacon and eggs a breakfast staple. Today the US produces 2 billion pounds of breakfast bacon every year.
In his book “All in the Family,” Ted Jr. remembered mealtimes at Sagamore Hill as "the best education I had," with the breakfast table serving as a place for vigorous discussion and learning. TR often read a book before breakfast.
TR's oldest son recalled that breakfast was not a quiet meal. It involved conversation about current events, history, politics, and the books the family was reading.
In Ted Jr.’s memoirs he wrote the breakfast menu was simple. His father typically ate a hard-boiled egg sometimes two. It had to be hard boiled nothing runny. He also ate something called a "Fat Rascal" that was like a British Scone frequently filled with raisons, or currents. On occasion TR and Edith would have hominy grits and a few strips of bacon or a slice of liver and always a large mug of coffee, or tea sweetened with 7 spoonfuls of sugar. TR was known to drink four mugs of coffee a day.
There is a story floating around that TR ate 12 eggs for breakfast. There’s no record that ever happened.
