WEBVTT - Why Do We Eat Three Meals a Day? 0:00:01.890 --> 0:00:07.650 Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts. Hey BrainStuff, 0:00:07.730 --> 0:00:11.450 Lauren Vogelbaum here. When you get up in the morning, 0:00:11.630 --> 0:00:13.510 if you took a second to think about it, would 0:00:13.530 --> 0:00:15.830 you have a pretty good idea of what you're going 0:00:15.870 --> 0:00:18.529 to eat that day and when you're going to eat it? 0:00:19.770 --> 0:00:22.970 The foods and the mealtimes that we encounter on any 0:00:23.010 --> 0:00:26.370 given day can feel routine, but they're really a weird 0:00:26.470 --> 0:00:30.330 intersection of a lot of societal factors. Not just local 0:00:30.370 --> 0:00:34.990 availability and personal preference, but also social class and economics 0:00:35.229 --> 0:00:40.540 and familial structure and corporate marketing. Modernly, in many places 0:00:40.580 --> 0:00:44.159 around the world, three meals a day are common, a breakfast, lunch, 0:00:44.260 --> 0:00:48.400 and dinner. And you probably have specific ideas about when 0:00:48.460 --> 0:00:51.600 these should be eaten, and what counts as appropriate food 0:00:51.659 --> 0:00:55.200 for each, and whether additional snacks are good or bad. 0:00:56.420 --> 0:00:59.100 But have you ever stopped to wonder why? Have we 0:00:59.180 --> 0:01:02.420 always eaten like this? Is there any biological reason to 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:05.940 eat three meals a day? Today, let's talk about the 0:01:06.030 --> 0:01:10.230 history of the three-meal-a-day structure and how it's still changing. 0:01:11.650 --> 0:01:13.970 One of the reasons why I'm so interested in food 0:01:14.209 --> 0:01:16.230 and do so many episodes on this show about it 0:01:16.690 --> 0:01:19.690 is that it's both a physical necessity and a facet 0:01:19.709 --> 0:01:23.509 of culture. You know, in addition to being something important 0:01:23.610 --> 0:01:26.170 that you do so that you don't die, it's also 0:01:26.330 --> 0:01:30.330 a source of pleasure and entertainment. and creating it requires 0:01:30.450 --> 0:01:35.190 craft and skill. Throughout history, people have eaten based on 0:01:35.330 --> 0:01:39.710 both of these aspects, necessity and culture, with different pressures 0:01:39.790 --> 0:01:45.260 shaping exactly what that looks like. First off, electricity and 0:01:45.380 --> 0:01:49.220 inexpensive electric lighting has vastly changed how we move through 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:53.300 the world in general. For millennia before that, people oriented 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:57.060 more of their routines around available sunlight. it would have 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:00.670 been pretty expensive to use candles or lamps to artificially 0:02:00.730 --> 0:02:03.950 light kitchens and rooms in order to prepare and serve food, 0:02:04.350 --> 0:02:08.190 so evening dinners would have been a luxury. Also, early 0:02:08.230 --> 0:02:11.980 morning breakfasts would have often been scant and simple before a. 0:02:12.060 --> 0:02:14.739 the sun came up to light your work and b. 0:02:14.860 --> 0:02:17.720 you got a fire going and started in on food preparation, 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:21.250 which also took a lot longer before modern appliances and 0:02:21.310 --> 0:02:26.579 other conveniences made the work easier. In ancient Egypt, for example, 0:02:26.700 --> 0:02:29.220 the norm was two meals a day, one light one 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:31.720 in the morning and a heavy one in the late afternoon. 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:34.880 In ancient Rome, the main meal of the day also 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:38.250 fell in the afternoon, right around 4pm, with light snacks 0:02:38.370 --> 0:02:41.710 eaten in the morning and around noontime. It was considered 0:02:41.780 --> 0:02:44.430 unhealthy to eat more than one full meal a day. 0:02:44.450 --> 0:02:49.830 A quick etymology note here about the word meal. The 0:02:49.889 --> 0:02:51.750 first time I looked into any of this, I had 0:02:51.790 --> 0:02:54.630 guessed that the meals, as in the times that we eat, 0:02:55.070 --> 0:02:57.510 And the meals, as in the ground-up grains, you know, 0:02:57.530 --> 0:03:01.410 your cornmeal, oatmeal, etc., I figured both came from the 0:03:01.450 --> 0:03:05.000 same linguistic root and probably indicated the importance of these 0:03:05.060 --> 0:03:09.020 grains to our ancestors' diets. But they're actually from two 0:03:09.100 --> 0:03:12.900 totally different root words. The grain meal comes from the 0:03:12.980 --> 0:03:18.829 Proto-Indo-European root mele, meaning crush or grind. This meaning has 0:03:18.850 --> 0:03:22.940 been around sort of forever. The eating time meal didn't 0:03:22.980 --> 0:03:26.579 come about until around the 1200s CE, from the root 0:03:26.620 --> 0:03:30.570 for measure, through the Germanic word meal, meaning a measure 0:03:30.610 --> 0:03:34.669 of time or an appointed time. The 1200s are when 0:03:34.710 --> 0:03:38.350 this word began to apply exclusively to first special occasions 0:03:38.390 --> 0:03:41.820 where you gather and eat, and then to any eating session. 0:03:43.340 --> 0:03:48.120 In medieval European towns, religious observance helped shape meals. people 0:03:48.180 --> 0:03:51.370 who attended morning mass wouldn't have broken their nightly fast 0:03:51.500 --> 0:03:55.730 until afterwards. This is where we got the word breakfast from, 0:03:56.230 --> 0:04:00.150 right around the middle of the 1400s. Breakfast was still 0:04:00.270 --> 0:04:03.570 a lighter meal at the time, involving leftovers and bread 0:04:03.590 --> 0:04:07.250 from the previous day, plus maybe additional protein that could 0:04:07.270 --> 0:04:10.030 be cooked up quickly over a new fire, in the 0:04:10.070 --> 0:04:13.630 form of eggs. As far as I can tell, eggs 0:04:13.750 --> 0:04:16.870 are a breakfast food in some cultures just because they 0:04:16.890 --> 0:04:21.730 cook fast. Similarly, preserved meats like cured sausages and bacon 0:04:21.930 --> 0:04:24.750 are already made, you don't have to go butcher an animal, 0:04:25.150 --> 0:04:29.440 and quick to heat up. Around this time, laborers in 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:32.500 England would have followed breakfast with a light midday meal 0:04:32.620 --> 0:04:35.779 called a beaver or a moonshine, and had their main 0:04:35.820 --> 0:04:38.840 meal of the day later, after work. The more well-to-do 0:04:38.900 --> 0:04:42.310 might have chosen either midday or after-business hours for their 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:46.990 main meal. But the nobility shirked all of this. they 0:04:47.029 --> 0:04:50.100 might have not risen early enough to need or want breakfast, 0:04:50.500 --> 0:04:54.420 and favored a sometimes sprawling, heavy midday meal starting around 0:04:54.420 --> 0:04:58.720 11 a.m. or noon that they called dinner. This was 0:04:58.779 --> 0:05:01.539 the first meal of their day, and the word dinner 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:04.250 comes to us through the French language rooted in the 0:05:04.310 --> 0:05:10.670 Latin for break one's fast, or sayunare. So, dinner originally 0:05:10.770 --> 0:05:13.750 meant breakfast, and was eaten at what we would now 0:05:13.850 --> 0:05:18.880 consider lunchtime. Note here that the word dinner has maintained 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:23.500 its midday connotation for some English speakers, particularly in the UK, 0:05:23.540 --> 0:05:25.760 I think, though I did also grow up with my 0:05:25.810 --> 0:05:31.030 grandparents in Ohio using it that way. Meanwhile, back in 0:05:31.089 --> 0:05:35.170 the 1300s, the word supper developed to describe a usually 0:05:35.330 --> 0:05:38.849 light evening meal. It came to English again from French, 0:05:39.070 --> 0:05:41.610 and from the practice of having a heavy midday meal 0:05:41.770 --> 0:05:44.870 and then a less formal repast of maybe just bread 0:05:44.890 --> 0:05:48.960 and soup, Soup? Supper? Yeah, later on in the evening. 0:05:50.460 --> 0:05:53.560 Over the centuries, the fashionable time for the upper class 0:05:53.620 --> 0:05:56.820 and royalty to eat a day's main meal shifted later 0:05:57.060 --> 0:06:01.060 and earlier and later again. By the middle of the 1600s, 0:06:01.730 --> 0:06:04.770 the word luncheon came to describe a sort of light 0:06:04.810 --> 0:06:09.290 meal in between heavier ones. Luncheon originally meant a chunk 0:06:09.390 --> 0:06:12.420 or thick slice of something, like cheese or bread, so 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:15.020 the connotation was definitely to more of a snack than 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:19.730 a full meal. A play from 1652 said that lunching 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:24.230 is intermediary, which is a great word unto itself. The 0:06:24.250 --> 0:06:29.130 shorter-term lunch developed a little later, but around the same time. So, 0:06:29.450 --> 0:06:31.790 we have all of the roots of our modern three 0:06:31.850 --> 0:06:34.789 meals a day by the turn of the 1700s, but 0:06:34.830 --> 0:06:38.029 those meals wouldn't cement themselves into what we would recognize 0:06:38.070 --> 0:06:42.620 today until the Industrial Revolution changed well, it changed a 0:06:42.660 --> 0:06:46.270 lot of things, but key here are A, how people 0:06:46.350 --> 0:06:50.470 work and attend school, and B, the creation of packaged, 0:06:50.750 --> 0:06:55.790 branded products. Here in the United States, by the late 0:06:55.790 --> 0:07:00.310 18 to early 1900s, breakfast became a quick, simple fuel 0:07:00.350 --> 0:07:04.490 for your day. A midday lunch, a casual situation either 0:07:04.550 --> 0:07:07.310 packed with you or obtained on the go, And the 0:07:07.450 --> 0:07:10.700 evening meal, pushed later with the advent of electric lighting, 0:07:10.980 --> 0:07:13.619 was the main meal of the day, called either dinner 0:07:13.820 --> 0:07:17.940 or supper. Previously, the average worker would have spent all 0:07:17.980 --> 0:07:20.400 day around their family, and kids were more likely to 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:24.100 be at home. But with these shifts in work and school, 0:07:24.670 --> 0:07:28.950 breakfast and or an evening meal became the family connection points. 0:07:30.330 --> 0:07:36.530 And yes, marketing absolutely influenced this. and developments in nutrition science, 0:07:36.910 --> 0:07:41.970 which marketers bent to their advantage. Take breakfast, for example. 0:07:43.050 --> 0:07:45.590 The makers of packaged products noted that this was an 0:07:45.730 --> 0:07:48.790 area for growth. Some people were just having bread and 0:07:48.810 --> 0:07:53.390 a coffee. Breakfast cereals came out of wellness and purity 0:07:53.430 --> 0:07:57.970 campaigns of the 1890s, claiming that plain, cooked whole grains, 0:07:58.290 --> 0:08:02.360 sanitarily packaged, were good for your health. As we said above, 0:08:02.700 --> 0:08:05.780 bacon was already a natural choice for a quick morning meal, 0:08:06.260 --> 0:08:09.220 but it only became a traditional part of American breakfast 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:12.850 plates when a nephew of Sigmund Freud, one Edward Bernays, 0:08:13.210 --> 0:08:16.930 ran a successful PR campaign for a bacon packaging company 0:08:17.050 --> 0:08:21.070 in the 1920s, claiming that doctors recommended a larger meal 0:08:21.190 --> 0:08:24.450 at the beginning of the day. Sliced bread showed up 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.600 in the 1930s and drove a new market for toasters, 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:31.340 which would later drive markets for other foods like toaster pastries. 0:08:32.450 --> 0:08:35.390 Orange juice joined the meal after World War II, when 0:08:35.450 --> 0:08:39.550 makers of frozen OJ concentrate capitalized on fears of vitamin 0:08:39.580 --> 0:08:44.679 deficiency to push their product. Amidst all of this, the 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:49.580 concept of a big, sit-down, familial evening meal solidified going 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:53.790 into the mid-century, partially as a reaction to families being 0:08:53.870 --> 0:08:57.319 scattered to the winds during the day. It became seen 0:08:57.380 --> 0:09:00.699 as a way to catch up and to instill family values, 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:06.400 which was also pushed through movies, television, and commercials. As 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:09.970 part of this, snacking became sort of vilified, or at 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:13.570 least seen as an indulgence that would ruin your square 0:09:13.670 --> 0:09:18.050 and morally upright dinner. The sheer pressure on middle-class women 0:09:18.090 --> 0:09:21.429 to provide perfectly nutritious and delectable dinners through the 1950s 0:09:21.450 --> 0:09:25.320 and 60s is part of what spurred the feminist movement 0:09:25.420 --> 0:09:30.940 of the 1960s and 70s. Of course, mealtimes and expectations 0:09:30.980 --> 0:09:34.340 thereof didn't play out in exactly the same way everywhere. 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:38.719 Some cultures, like parts of France and Mexico, developed a 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:42.839 leisurely and social lunch as a main meal of the day. Others, 0:09:43.059 --> 0:09:46.360 like parts of Spain and Italy, developed light meals during 0:09:46.380 --> 0:09:49.699 the daytime and saved the heavier, more social one for 0:09:49.940 --> 0:09:53.869 long after sunset. a bunch of cultures have a designated 0:09:53.990 --> 0:09:58.020 mid-morning or mid-afternoon drink and snack time built into their days. 0:09:59.450 --> 0:10:05.480 And now... our meal patterns are changing yet again. Busier schedules, economics, 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:09.950 more screen time, the availability of prepared packaged foods, the 0:10:10.130 --> 0:10:13.850 ubiquity of fast food, the whole snack food industry, and 0:10:14.110 --> 0:10:17.250 even the development of meal delivery apps have all influenced 0:10:17.410 --> 0:10:22.980 what and when we eat. From the early 1970s to 2010, 0:10:22.980 --> 0:10:25.640 the number of Americans who eat three square meals a 0:10:25.660 --> 0:10:31.520 day declined from around 75% to around 60%. Just for example, 0:10:31.860 --> 0:10:36.360 a 2025 poll of Americans by YouGov found that over 85% 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:39.429 of millennials and Gen Xers still eat breakfast, but a 0:10:39.450 --> 0:10:44.829 full 26% of Gen Z doesn't. And that's not necessarily 0:10:44.870 --> 0:10:49.240 a bad thing, nutritionally speaking. Human bodies are complicated, and 0:10:49.300 --> 0:10:53.360 every body works a little differently, but all unbiased evidence 0:10:53.660 --> 0:10:56.590 points to our health being influenced by what and how 0:10:56.620 --> 0:11:00.290 much we eat overall, not so much when we consume it. 0:11:01.570 --> 0:11:04.250 There is some evidence that eating too close to bedtime, 0:11:04.590 --> 0:11:07.069 say within an hour or two, will spike your blood 0:11:07.110 --> 0:11:10.740 sugar and insulin, which can lower your melatonin, which can 0:11:10.820 --> 0:11:14.480 all make it harder to sleep. But other than that, 0:11:15.070 --> 0:11:19.680 Scientists basically recommend eating when you're hungry when possible. You know, 0:11:19.700 --> 0:11:22.620 to pay attention to your body. Not just your cravings, 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:25.880 but also how you feel after you eat or don't eat. 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:30.970 We all have some baked-in cultural expectations about our eating habits. 0:11:31.370 --> 0:11:34.550 Just think about eating pasta for breakfast or a bowl 0:11:34.570 --> 0:11:38.170 of cereal for dinner. But both of those are technically 0:11:38.309 --> 0:11:42.550 just a grain bowl with varying toppings. We've only been 0:11:42.630 --> 0:11:47.240 eating three squares a day for... tops 150 years. And 0:11:47.500 --> 0:11:51.130 it's not a moral nor a nutritional failing to buck 0:11:51.190 --> 0:11:54.949 that in favor of whatever works for you. Try to 0:11:55.030 --> 0:11:57.990 eat some protein and some fruit or veg and a 0:11:58.050 --> 0:12:00.210 bit of fats and grains at all of your meals, 0:12:00.809 --> 0:12:05.290 or to balance them throughout your day through snacking. Definitely hydrate. 0:12:06.130 --> 0:12:09.280 And whatever you do, take care of yourself out there, okay? 0:12:14.210 --> 0:12:17.260 Today's episode was written by me with additional material from 0:12:17.300 --> 0:12:20.339 the article, Is There a Biological Reason to Eat Three 0:12:20.380 --> 0:12:24.559 Meals a Day? on HowStuffWorks.com, written by L'Oreal Dove. BrainStuff 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.770 is a production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with HowStuffWorks.com 0:12:27.929 --> 0:12:30.750 and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more shows from 0:12:30.809 --> 0:12:34.550 iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or 0:12:34.670 --> 0:12:36.440 wherever you listen to your favorite shows.