A bit of hyperbole, but having married into an East Asian household and spent lots of time traveling around the world, I'm soundly convinced that a well defined breakfast meal, with its own traditions, foods and culinary style, is one of the greatest inventions of western civilization. I have to question this article because the American breakfast is pretty much just a local variant on the traditional full breakfast…
What you are actually saying is that you like the food you are accustomed to eating, and you doused your observation in a coating of provincial chauvinism.
When I'm overseas for a long time, there are 3 things that I crave down to my bones. I guess those are the three things that are core to my being as an American. I'm not ashamed to admit this either after working with many expats in the States who practically go insane trying to find even simple tastes from home to center themselves.
a) the kind of breakfast that's common to the English speaking world (I don't want to say Western, because breakfasts on the European mainland aren't it). In a pinch some fried eggs and a pastry of some kind with some coffee will do.
b) Tex-Mex food. Taco Bell in particular (if you can charitably call that Tex-Mex). I've stood in line for 2 hours and paid $5 a taco once at an overseas Taco Bell I needed it so bad.
But really, finding even passable Tex-Mex outside of the U.S. is frustratingly hard. I've even eaten "Mexican" meat pies in Australia I was so desperate for the taste. They did not satisfy.
c) Any kind of African-American music...which is odd since I don't normally like most of it, but hearing it on the radio after a long time away from home is the sweetest sound I've ever heard and has symbolically told me that yes, I'm really finally home.
One time, after a very extended stay in Germany, when I could practically feel the sausage and cold cuts oozing from my pores I was thinking about tossing it in and going home until I came across a Soul Food restaurant in Vilsek [1]. I sat down, ordered some fried catfish! , sweet ice tea, collard greens and cornbread and sat there for three hours listening to background jazz music. For those three hours I was absolutely transported into the symbolic heart of Americana and left there absolutely renewed and psychically refreshed. I think the staff there knew what I was going through and came and kept the sweet tea filled over some light conversation.
I don't normally like any of those foods or jazz but sitting there completely recentered me mentally and I went back to my job for the next few weeks and finished it without problem.