Jenet, is a roll and some chocolate a healthy breakfast?

[kadioguy]

[My sentence]

Helen: Jenet, is a roll and some chocolate a healthy breakfast?
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I think that grammatically it should be "are", but that colloquially it is okay to use "is", because we have to say the verb first and may not have much time to consider it.

Does this make sense?

 

[Skrej]

No.
It depends whether you're considering the roll and chocolate as two separate items, or as one group. In this case, they're considering the two items as one meal (or one breakfast).

It doesn't have anything to do how much time you have to consider the verb and agreement or word order. It's a subject/verb agreement decision.

 

[kadioguy]

[...]
It doesn't have anything to do how much time you have to consider the verb and agreement or word order. [...]

But I think that sometimes we could start an interrogative sentence with a singular verb but immediately realise/realize we're going to use a plural subject, especially in speech.

For example, "Is ..., um, are Tom and Janet going with me?"

[Edit: Improved the content.]

 

[Tarheel]

But I think that (in speaking) sometimes in interrogative sentences we could start with a singular verb and then suddenly realize we're going to use a plural subject.

Maybe. But you could always simply start over.

 

[Phaedrus]

Two rolls with butter and jam is a good breakfast.

Five miles isn't far if you have a car.

One hundred calories isn't very many.

Three classes is a manageable load.