Breakfast and Ireland, a weekday breakfast may involve a cereal dish, such as muesli, porridge or cereal, or toast or simply bread spread with jam or marmalade. Tea and coffee remain equally popular accompaniments. Marmalade, originally a Portuguese confection, had been a popular British spread to consume in the evening, before the Scots moved it to the breakfast table in the 18th century. It is however becoming very common to 'skip breakfast' entirely or take coffee or pastries on the morning commute. Portable quick snacks such as granola bars, ready-cut fruit and warm takeaway foods are becoming increasingly commonly consumed away
Breakfast cereal starkly different from their ancestors. As one example, Kellogg's Sugar Smacks, created in 1953, had 56% sugar by weight. Different mascots were introduced, such as the Rice Krispies elves and later pop icons like Tony the Tiger and the Trix Rabbit. In the 1920s, national advertising in magazines and radio broadcasts played a key role in the emergence of the fourth big cereal manufacturer, General Mills. In 1921, James Ford Bell, president of a Minneapolis wheat milling firm, began experimenting with rolled wheat flakes. After tempering, steaming, cracking wheat, and processing it with syrup, sugar, and salt, it was prepared