In the 1980s, there was only one meal that mattered to me: Sunday breakfast. A break from monotonous cereal or toast, my dad’s full breakfast was the highlight of the food week.

True, his signature dish (naturally, this was the only time he cooked), would not have flown at the Wolseley – or any self-respecting high street cafe, for that matter. He had taken this originally conspicuous symbol of Victorian prosperity and pared it back to an ultra-convenient, cut-price pleasure. Who needs bacon when you can fry luncheon meat with your eggs and serve that with hotdog sausages and tinned tomatoes enriched with semi-skimmed and Kwik Save No Frills cheddar? “That is not a full breakfast,” you may cry, “that is child neglect.” But to a man who grew up in postwar Salford (and me), it seemed like heaven. With extra fried bread.

For years afterwards, the full breakfast continued to feel gloriously self-indulgent. In the era before wall-to-wall Wetherspoons and Egg McMuffins, when eating breakfast out was still a glamorous novelty, an uncle of mine who lived on a different timetable to most Salfordians used to take me to a Swinton pub that served breakfast on Sunday morning. Ordering the full breakfast was almost compulsory in this high-rolling world. Later, at hotels, the morning after a wedding, say, it was often a hangover-busting lifesaver. Or so it seemed.

Yet today, I cannot remember the last time I ate one. And I am not alone. A new poll for Ginger Research found that almost 20% of 18- to 30-year-olds surveyed have never eaten a full breakfast. Their reasons may make you despair: 27% said they hate black pudding. Far worse, 42% of naysayers (and 100% of terrible snobs) said it “reminded them of men in vests hanging around in transport cafes”. But this does chime with wider (sales) reports of a gradual generational shift away from the big brekkie. At least until “greasy spoon” becomes a hot, ironic aesthetic on Instagram.

Of course there have been many exaggerated reports of the death of the full breakfast down through the years and I wouldn’t want overegg talk of its decline now. In fact, according to abstract polls, the full breakfast continues to exert a firm grip on our collective imagination. In a 2017 YouGov survey 83% of English people described themselves as fans. A recent study for the Grocer found the full breakfast was Britain’s favourite cooked option and, anecdotally, cafe owners report that it is still a bestseller. And it remains popular even in hip venues that offer all those smashed avo and chia porridge options that so trigger certain internet-dwelling middle-aged men.

Yet, in an increasingly multiracial and ecologically aware UK, where greater numbers are avoiding pork products for religious or green reasons, and at a time when “wellness” is a cultural juggernaut, the full breakfast is undoubtedly, at some level, on the back foot.

‘ In the last decade, Britain’s breakfast-brunch scene has evolved into one of UK food’s most exciting strands.’ Customers queue outside the Breakfast Club cafe in Soho, London. Photograph: Alamy

My diminishing interest has followed a similar pattern. Justifiably or not, I treat the processed meat-cancer link with blithe “we’re all dying, every day” fatalism. We cannot eat our way to immortality. But, circa 1998, when I was topping 18 stone, I did decide the full-breakfast blowout was calories I could live without. I had begun to doubt its efficacy as a hangover cure, too. For all that restorative cysteine in the eggs, eating a mound of grease and carbs seemed increasingly (blood rushing to your stomach as you flop, lightheaded on the sofa) to be doing more harm than good. In 2020, as I try to minimise my meat consumption and shopping budget, it is hardly a meal I will go back to.

Not least because it now seems a boring option. In the last decade, Britain’s breakfast-brunch scene has evolved into one of UK food’s most exciting strands; with breakfast as an event and time slot growing as lunch and dinner decline. Inspired by the laidback atmosphere, globetrotting menus and superlative coffee on offer in Antipodean cafes (key dates on the timeline: Flat White and Lantana opening in London in 2005 and 2008), the UK is now awash with venues offering something similar. From Belfast’s General Merchants to Laynes in Leeds, Idle Hands in Manchester to Glasgow’s William Cafe, you are never far someone doing zingy, flavour-packed things with shakshuka, French toast, huevos rotos and sweetcorn fritters. All of which put the rather one-note, savoury slog of the full breakfast in the shade. Note: you can get smashed avocado in Wetherspoons now.

So Britain’s breakfast horizons, particularly for the under-40s most likely to eat out, have widened enormously. Each new morning is full of possibility; even if at home we stick to cereal or eggs. Now one option among many, the full breakfast’s appeal has been diluted.

Do I care? Not a lot, as I order harissa fried eggs on sourdough with avocado, dukkah and labneh at Sheffield’s Forge Bakehouse. Just don’t tell my dad.

• Tony Naylor is a Manchester-based journalist