Why Do We Have Three Meals A Day?
You eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You’ve done it your whole life, so it seems like that’s the way it’s supposed to be, not just how it came to be.
You eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This should be no surprise to you. You’ve done it your whole life, so it seems like that’s the way it’s supposed to be, not just how it came to be.
And as much as you may want to believe it came about many millennia ago as a grand decision that humankind agreed upon as best for us, that’s not what happened.
We Ate Less Often In the Old Days
No wonder the Italians carb load so much. Photo: @esztefania / Instagram
According to historian Caroline Yeldham, the (very successful) Romans frowned heavily on the concept of multiple meals a day.
She explains, "They were obsessed with digestion and eating more than one meal, known as a cena, was considered a form of gluttony. This thinking impacted on the way people ate for a very long time.”
Breakfast wasn’t necessarily a thing for a long while afterward either, as food historian Ivan Day points out. In the Middle Ages, people weren’t allowed to eat before morning mass.
Time eventually gave way to social change, and people started breaking the night’s fast earlier in the day.
Hello, Breakfast
The happiest meal on Earth! Photo: @curtgotowork / Instagram
In the 17th Century, all social classes more or less adopted the practice of breakfast, though it evolved into an absurdly decadent carnival of food for the upper class.
Breakfast’s common place in the eating routine throughout the socioeconomic ranks is thanks in large part to the Industrial Revolution.
The newly set pattern of the ordinary work day more or less required a meal first thing in the morning to sustain the working populace throughout the day. They’d naturally break for lunch and then come home to their families for dinner.
United States Of Three Meals
Don’t forget lunch! Nom nom nom. Photo: @__katarina / Instagram
Historian Abigail Carroll, author of Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal, argues that three meals, or at least, a dedication to a meal routine, came from the strange beginnings of Europeans and Native Americans interacting.
Settlers brought forth set meal times to be, in their mind, more civilized than the natives, whose dining evolved with seasons, sometimes even fasting.
Six Meals a Day Keeps The Cravings Away
Yeah but then our meals would look like this. Boo. Photo: @jared_eat_clean_get_lean / Instagram
For the same reasons three meals (and a snack) a day makes sense, many argue that six smaller meals would be more sensible, especially for weight loss.
The reason is that with six meals a day, you’re more efficiently able to maintain consistency in food intake and, therefore, appetite control, so it doesn’t, in theory, ever become quantity over quality.
You’d also never again text your friend, “OMG KAREN GET DRESSED. COME ON, LET’S GO I’M STAAAARVIIIIIIIIING.”