Flipped Over Breakfast
“But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank…” [Daniel 1:8]
Many people love to eat pancakes for breakfast. Did you know one of the tallest (it keeps growing!) stacks of pancakes on record is 29.5 inches high set by chefs Sean McGinlay and Natalie King of Glagow’s Hilton Grosvenor Hotel. It contained 672 pancakes made with 100 eggs, 17 pints of milk, 11 pounds of flour, and 6.6 pounds of butter. But if you think that’s big, the largest pancake made weighed three tons! The Co-operative Union Ltd of Manchester, England, created a pancake measuring 49 feet, 2.55 inches in diameter on August 13, 1994. It contained an estimated two million calories!
The most pancakes ever made by an individual in one hour is 956 and goes to Steve Hamilton of Indiana. He claims to have flipped over 34 million pancakes in his lifetime. If they were laid end to end they would stretch from Los Angeles to Springfield, Illinois. And the most pancakes made in eight hours by a group of 300 volunteer cooks is 76,382. Thirtyeight griddles were used to cook almost 6,000 pounds of batter. People who ate them up used about 136 gallons of maple syrup and 365 pounds of butter. There is actually no official record for the number of pancakes people have eaten at one sitting since the Guinness Book of World Records tends to track things that people don’t normally enjoy eating in large quantities (like garlic cloves or onions). Some say the unofficial record is 72. (I like pancakes, but that is going just a little too far!)
Obviously, overeating pancakes for breakfast is not good for your health. But, did you know that skipping breakfast could be deadly? In one study, skipping breakfast was linked to an increased risk of premature death. By far, the best meal to skip, or at least minimize, is dinner. Another study reported better weight loss, improvement in diabetic conditions, and increased thyroid efficiency among a group of 595 people who consumed their last meal of the day by 3:00 p.m.
Wise eating can make a difference in your body and spirit. Daniel knew this when he turned away from eating the rich foods offered to him in Babylon. He challenged the steward overseeing him and his friends to let them only eat simple food. The result? “And at the end of ten days their features appeared better and fatter in the flesh than all the young men who ate the portion of the king’s delicacies” (Daniel 1:15). So, eat a healthy breakfast and enjoy better health!
