Academics and their breakfasts
Greatly amused by this story in Inside Higher Ed about a new website which encourages academics to photograph and consider their breakfasts:
What you eat for breakfast may not merit space on your C.V, but a new website called Academic Breakfast is based on the idea that how professors start their days matters.The website invites academics to post a photograph of their breakfast, and to answer six quick questions: where they live, their institution, their job, their research in five words, their breakfast in five words, and their food philosophy in 10 words. Many of the philosophies mix the importance of doing the right thing in terms of nutrition and the environment, but also enjoying food.
Among the food philosophies shared are “eat healthily but indulge your honest cravings without any guilt” from a McGill University graduate student and “Treat the planet and all beings well; have pleasure” from a California State University at San Marcos sociologist and performance artist.While there are plenty of healthy foods visible, one can also spot breakfast items — Diet Coke, cold pizza — that might not appear on nutritionists’ recommendations for the morning. Several people included shots of their morning pills. And while most of the photographs depict the food before anyone started eating, there are also shots that were taken mid-meal.
The full glory of the Academic Breakfast Tumblr is here and it certainly proves that everyone has different approaches, academic or otherwise, to the first meal of the day. It’s a bold and innovative idea. But whatever next? No doubt someone is already working on Deans and their Doughnuts, Provosts who love Pancakes and Vegetables which look like Vice-Chancellors.
