MASTERCHEF star John Torode has been cooking for a long time and he thinks we might be doing breakfast all wrong.

The TV star has just got back from filming in Asia and his travels have prompted him to question why we eat what we do for each meal of the day.

His ideal way to kick off the morning is with the food he ate while he was filming his new series in South Korea - meat, rice soup and kimchi.

The Australian-born chef, 51, says: "In this country, I still believe, the relationship with food is quite tenuous.

"I think there are still a lot of people who consider it to be fuel and I know quite a few people who just need to eat, it's not ceremonial.

"If you go to Thailand, everybody is concerned about what they are going to have for lunch, in China everybody knows what they are going to have and what things mean and the stories behind them, we aren't like that.

"The thing about Western food that is interesting is the definition of what you are allowed to have for breakfast, what you are allowed to have for lunch and what you are allowed to have for dinner.

"Because I have this thing where I love Asia, for me breakfast is brilliant, I can have rice soup, I can have some kimchi, whatever I like."

But this idea is horrifying to his partner, EastEnders' star Lisa Faulkner - "Lisa says to me, 'that's not breakfast food!' Breakfast food is a piece of toast and a fried egg.

"What is for lunch? A sandwich. But I don't like bread very much so what do I have?

"But in Asia I can have whatever I want and at dinner time I can have the same thing I had for breakfast if I want to and it's not considered to be weird.

"I think it's really interesting the way in which we have been told what we are allowed to eat. We know cornflakes were introduced by somebody to feed an asylum but we have adopted it and the clever marketing people have told us we should eat it for breakfast.

"As a child I wasn't allowed to drink milk because I have quite a bad allergy to it, however, everybody else was told they had to drink milk for calcium to get strong bones.

"I'm not a doctor, I'm not a nutritionist, all I know is I've never broken a bone and I never had milk ever and I think an Asian breakfast is a very good thing."

The breakfast was not the only thing Torode fell in love with on his eight-week trip round Korea - he also took a liking to Spam.

"Spam is massive there," he says. "At Thanksgiving you give gift boxes of Spam. Now I'm a Spam lover."

His new passion even extends to an enthusiasm for a bizarre dish dubbed army stew - "a pack of instant noodles, kimchi, stock, Spam, baloney, frankfurters, tomato ketchup, boiled together with sliced cheese across the top. It's hot dog and noodles, it's brilliant."

He loves it so much he is planning to make it for his four children, saying: "The first thing I thought was 'I'm going to have to make this for somebody because it's just so wrong it's absolutely right, cheesy hot dogs and noodles.

"I haven't made it at home yet, I don't think Lisa will appreciate it but I think my kids will like it."

:: John Torode's Korean Food Tour is on Good Food from July 17.