Protein complementation is the modern name a nutritionist might use to describe a meal that is lacking in meat yet has all the necessary nutrients for the body. It all sounds so advanced when terms like amino acids and biological value get thrown in, but at the end of the day, no matter how fancy your nutritionist, their likely suggestion of the best protein complementation is going to be the most common and basic of dishes in Latin America: rice and beans.

Rice and beans is the humble king of foods: it is inexpensive to make, the ingredients are easy to find, it is filling, it can be accompanied by a wide variety of foods that can dress up or dress down the dish — a fried egg, simple salad, tortilla wrap, fried plantain, chicken stew, hunk of beef, avocado, cheese, — and although recipes vary widely from one end of Latin America to the other, the level of culinary skill necessary to prepare it is generally basic.

So why aren’t people having rice and beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Well, they are. In places like Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panamá, a plate of gallo pinto is an essential part of a typical meal, and depending on what meal of the day it is, can be accompanied by various foods. The dish expands across the whole region, though it changes names across borders. In El Salvador and Honduras, you will find it as “el casamiento” (the marriage), in Cuba it is called “moros con cristianos” (Moors and Christians) or “congrí”, depending on the color of the beans.

It would be an unforgivable mistake to visit Central America and pass on a rice and beans breakfast. I nearly did, to be frank; when we started our journey in Panamá, the downtown hostel we picked had an amazing international scene, plenty of booze, and free banana pancakes for breakfast. We did as Jack Johnson, and then moved on to Bocas del Toro, where the hosts of our accommodation were German, so breakfast revolved around magnificent freshly baked bread. I was cheated out of my Costa Rica experience, spending a grand total of one night in San José, so it wasn’t until we got to Nicaragua, and specifically to the island of Little Corn, that the gallo pinto caught up with me.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have breakfast, and those who have serious breakfast. Those who skip breakfast don’t deserve a category, the savages. In any case, it was here, with sand in my feet and the slight hot breeze of the Caribbean summer that I first tried serious breakfast. A more than generous portion of gallo pinto, served with fried sweet plantain, a couple of thin slices of avocado, a chunk of fresh cheese, and a cup of award-winning coffee. This is the breakfast you need to accomplish things in your day. Toast, eggs, pancakes, cereal, yogurt, that’s all for people who are going to struggle, stress, find life difficult and ultimately reschedule. Some of us don’t have the stomach for serious breakfast on a daily basis: it’s not that we are wimps, it’s that, well, it’s complicated, sometimes things just don’t work out that way, I mean, today is just not great, maybe we can reschedule…

I have met a few people who eat serious breakfast around the world. Depending the country, the dish varies on the basic ingredients (rice in Latin America, noodles in South East Asia, sweet potato in Africa), but the people, regardless of their nationality, race, education and cultural background all have one shared trait: they get things done.