‘One of the stupidest things in an earnest but stupid school of culinary thought is that each of the three daily meals should be ‘balanced’.” So argues American food writer MFK Fisher in her 1942 book How to Cook a Wolf. She goes on: “In the first place not all people need or want three meals each day. Many of them feel better with two or one and one-half, or five.”
Fisher wrote her book ostensibly as a guide on how to feed yourself pleasurably and nourishingly during a period of food shortages caused by war, but there is much in her insightful advice to inspire and provoke us today. More than 80 years later, threats to the sacred breakfast-lunch-dinner mode of eating can still make the news: “A nation of snackers: Britons no longer eat three meals a day”, gasped one recent headline in the Times. Deviations from the “standard” model are the subject of research by academics and health professionals, and food retailers commission studies in an attempt to understand (and shape?) when and how customers consume their food.
The idea that we should sit down for three meals at roughly the same time every day has become such an essential part of how we organise our lives – even when we’re failing to do it – that we forget it isn’t the natural order of things. Instead, it is a regime that was created not to serve the needs of our bodies or to give us pleasure, however much we may have managed to adapt it for these purposes – but to fit in with a day of labour. Like many of the ways that we live now, it has its roots in the Industrial Revolution: that was when breakfast became a brief meal eaten before the working morning, lunch something light but fortifying to be wolfed down quickly in the days before breaks were paid, and dinner a final sitting when everybody had finished in the evening. Before this people had of course eaten meals but they were made up of different foods and historically slipped around in terms of timing.
The last time I ate three meals a day, I was still in high school. This has caused relationship issues over the years, given that “I only eat when I’m hungry” seems nonsensical to many. I generally like to eat a decent meal sometime in midafternoon to evening and otherwise snack as needed.
Nutritionally speaking, there’s not much problem to doing that. Meal timings do impact your circadian rhythms, so it can be beneficial to keep a consistent schedule, but outside of that, just make sure that your macros and micros are met so that you don’t end up malnourished. Socially speaking, our meals are times to congregate with friends and family and everyone following their own meal schedules could make that more difficult. As we’re in a time period where meatworld social spaces are dwindling, that might not be a desirable trade-off. Personally, I’m not dependent on the social aspect of food, so I just eat to fuel my exercise regimen. Breakfast and lunch are the planned meals while everything else is in response to hunger.
Hmmmm articles about not needing three meals a day when the world is facing food shortages.
Said the farmer to his neighrbour: ‘Crap, just when I had taught my donkey to work without any food the stupid animal had to die.’
Food is fuel. It can be enjoyable fuel, but that’s what it is. No one is going to the gas station and continuing to try to pump gas into an overflowing tank.
I don’t view this through the lens of food shortages so much as that “three meals a day” was drummed into our heads by capital in the first place. It’s unnecessary, but we spend more on food by strict adherence to these expectations, which is always the goal.
¿Porque no los dos?
It’s unnecessary, so they don’t want us to complain when we don’t get three meals a day and also, there will be food shortages.
To what the other guy said, though, I really don’t think they care if we die, so that’s not really a consideration of theirs.
This makes me compare this (gestures wildly) in my mind to the amount of upset that the global economy suffered when the evergiven ran aground in the Panama Canal. As far as I see, they really don’t compare because what’s going on right now has such sprawlingly wide consequences and destructive outcomes that I don’t know if we’d ever see it repaired in our grandchildren’s lifetimes.
Sure you’ve got the right canal, there?
My standard for the last 35 years is to eat a big dinner around 5pm and a snack at 8pm. That’s pretty much it. No breakfast. No lunch. No other snacks.
I have skipped breakfast for most of my life, preferring to eat an early lunch and then dinner whenever I’m hungry. I used to fight with my dad all the time about this when I was under his roof, he used to be adamant that “You need to fuel up for the day, its the most important meal blah blah blah.” People really do be hearing propaganda and just incorporate it in their lives as if it’s how things should be. Like, that important meal of the day shit was invented by John Kellogg and that man was fucking crazy.
Wasn’t it invented by John Kellogg to stop masturbatuon or something equally insane? Or was that corn flakes?
He invented breakfast being important to sell more corn flakes. He invented corn flakes to stop masturbation.
Sometimes we eat what we like to call “breakfastlunchdinner” at around 3pm. I guess you could call it intermittent fasting, except that’s not really on a schedule.
In any case, I’ve never felt any better eating 3 meals a day. I did gain weight faster, though. 2 meals seems to be a good balance for me, with one being more of a snack.
I don’t really understand the whole religious adherence to food schedules some people have. I guess if that works for them, then it doesn’t really matter to me. It does mean that there are very good times to plan a restaurant visit around because the restaurant will be damn near empty, though. It’s convenient in a weird way.
Also, oddly, I found at least in the US that the areas that are more performatively religious (Texas, for example) tend to follow a schedule more strictly, and that more people follow approximately the same schedule. Trying to get lunch at 12pm? Good luck. Wait an hour? Everywhere is practically empty.
I’ve never felt any better eating 3 meals a day. I did gain weight faster, though.
If you want to lose weight, eat more calories in the morning and less in the evening.
Do some people still honestly adhere to three meals a day just because it’s traditional or someone told them that’s the way it’s supposed to be? C’mon it’s 2026, we can do whatever we want. I eat when I’m hungry. I don’t eat when I’m not hungry. It could be any time of day or night as many times or as few times days I please. There doesn’t need to be a schedule.
El antiguo dicho: "Desayuna como un rey, come como un príncipe y cena como un null
Y si cenas a las 18, horario ingles, y no desayunas hasta las 7 u 8, ya tienes tambien el ayuno intermitente.
There is a very important social aspect of eating that also demands routine. Not all humans participate in this but all benefit from it.
I would not consider that a truism. As soon as “demands” comes up, ask yourself: Demanded by whom, and for what purpose?
Of course sharing a meal is enjoyable. It doesn’t need to happen on rigid timeframes dictated by others.
oh god it’s a fucking figure of speech that means for practical fucking purposes when multiple people are involved they all have to act more predictably if they want to fucking coordinate their fucking actions
if you want to have a meal with others, you all need to have the meal at the same fucking time. it’s fucking tautological. the “demand” if you want to read it that way comes from the funda-fucking-mental nature of fucking time and fucking causality
