Some regular Thai bloggers and readers will recognize this popular title. What do Thai's eat for breakfast?
In my experience, whatever's going.
Everything from corn flakes to chicken fried rice to tom yam gai. I've eaten them all as the rooster crows. Odd at first, but, easy to adapt to, especially if you're fat falang.
In fact, Thailand has probably destroyed any habits of food
etiquette I may have held before my time here. I'm quite happy to eat
mine (and missus) dessert before main course, join others in gobbing food out onto the plate when its a bone or is generally indigestable, plus all that reaching across tables means I'm used to spraying rice everywhere.

One of my favourite breakfast dishes is the 'kow moo deng' that I adore (pork with egg and rice and sweet sauce). The other day, on the way to Bangkok I had a pork curry, with fried egg. It has become my staple 'going to Bangkok' breakfast (above).
With all the things I've heard over the years, I've started to worry that my daily average intake of three fried eggs a day might be leading me up the yellow bricked arterial road, so I thought I'd best check to see if my concerns were warranted.
According to a great little site called www.myfitnesspal.com, a normal, Thai sized pork curry roughly works out at:
- 5 grams carbs
- 16 grams protein
- 44 grams fat
- 480 calories
Wheras, a man size bowl of crunchie nut cornflakes, with semi skimmed comes in at:
- 31 grams carbs
- 6 grams protein
- 4 grams fat
- 178 calories
So basically, the curry has loads more calories, loads more fat, but far less carbs, and far more protein. So, on the surface, the corn flakes look to be the healthier start to the day, in terms of calorie content, and grams of fat...
But hold on.... what about when that bowl of cereal doesn't fill you up? and you opted for a cheeky cadburys fruit & nut chocolate bar from the office vending machine, to supplement your oh-so-healthy Western brekkie... what would be the calorie scores then?
Fruit & Nut Milk chocolate bar (42grams)
- 25 grams carbs (56g total combined with corn flakes)
- 6 grams protein (12g total)
- 4 grams fat (8g total)
- 220 calories (398 total)
So really, a pork curry is not that far different from a bowl of corn flakes and a choc bar is it?....
What about a Bacon McMuffin for breakfast?
- 29 grams carbs
- 16 grams protein
- 14 grams fat
- 310 calories
OK, enough of diggin myself into a hole here, curry looks to be a pretty unhealthy choice for breakfast... But getting up to the dreaded tesco's to get hold of a packet of frosties every damn week is a royal pain, so, curry is what the fat falang eats for brekkie.
... and for those of you still reading who are looking for some kind of thoughtful conclusion to this post, I took a cross-sectional survey of local Thai folk in SB, and I asked them what they had for breakfast...
The answer everytime?
Rice.
Useless.