Breakfast place owners in Van furious after Dr Öz’s remarks

ANKARA-Demirören News Agency

Breakfast place owners in the eastern province of Van have slammed world-famous cardiac surgeon Dr. Mehmet Öz after he said breakfast is unhealthy and should be canceled.

He called breakfast an “advertising ploy” during an interview, further adding “a lot of the dogma that we were fed for decades came out of advertising.”

The Van breakfast, arguably the most famous in Turkey, features at least 20 products such as herb cheese, made with a mixture of various herbs unique to the region; martuğa, made with flour, butter and egg; and kavut, made with ground wheat.

Yusuf Konak, a Van breakfast place owner who serves the region’s unique meal, to some 10,000 people in the U.S., said that Americans have breakfast with unhealthy food.

But the Van breakfast is “healing,” he said.

“Their breakfasts have chocolate and chips. But our breakfast is natural; no junk food, no chocolate. I invite you [Dr. Öz] to Van,” Konak said.

“Dr Öz, if you love yourself, if you love your heart, I want you to come to Van and taste Van breakfast,” he added.



Opening their shops early in the morning and providing breakfast to local and foreign tourists coming from outside the city until noon, breakfast place owners said that Van breakfast is natural and healthy.

“Dr. Öz said the breakfast was not healthy. We were very upset as breakfast place owners when we heard this news. We started the day working upset. We disagree with him,” said Akif Çoşkun, who runs a breakfast place in the eastern province of Van.

“We invite him to Van to introduce Van breakfast. His opinions might change if he has Van breakfast,” Çoşkun added.

In 2014, with the participation of 51,793 people, the record of “the most crowded breakfast table in the world” was broken in Van.