Reading Text
The importance of a nourishing breakfast is beyond dispute according to nutritionists and historians alike, yet in chronological terms the morning meal is a comparatively recent fixture in English life, with references to breakfast seldom (1) .......... in medieval manuscripts. (2) .........., scattered allusions do exist to wayfarers taking sustenance at first light before (3) .......... on gruelling overland journeys, and to the infirm partaking of breakfast on the advice of physicians, but the overwhelming majority of the population went without unless they belonged to the nobility or royal household.
From the sixteenth century onward, however, breakfast gradually became the (4) .........., rather than the exception. Certain historians have (5) .......... this shift to the wider availability of foodstuffs, though proponents of this view have not always given due weight to other sweeping social transformations. Emerging (6) .......... of employment, for instance, may offer a more compelling explanation for the heightened significance now (7) .......... to the morning meal, as growing numbers of people were engaged for fixed working hours, frequently commencing at an extremely early hour. Taking a meal before leaving the house thus became (8) .......... in practical necessity, and was no longer a marker of social privilege alone.