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Three Meals Per Day · Why We Do What We Do

0:03
You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome to Why we Do
0:16
what we do. I am your hungry host, Abraham Oh, and I
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am your famished host, Shane. I guess we're both thinking about food a
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lot today, apparently where Psychology podcast, we talk about the things that people
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do, and one of the most core things that people do in this case,
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which is eat. Uh huh. We enjoy eating. I mean,
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you and I talk about food a lot. We do mostly I think because
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like it's always really fun to find really good vegan food. Yeah, we
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recommend food and restaurants and recipes and all sorts of ingredients sometimes all sorts of
0:47
things that we enjoy. But otherwise we mostly talk about the things that people
0:50
do, and just you know, a lot of what people do revolves around
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food in a way. So it makes sense that eventually we land on just
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a very We've done some food specific topics, like we talked about crunchy food
1:02
and super tasters and other things. Yeah, but anyway, here we are
1:04
talking about food again because why not. Well, and you know the amount
1:08
of ritual and practice and just all the things that go along around food,
1:12
Like there's you could do an entire just an entire podcast show on food and
1:19
food practices and all the things that go along with it. And so you
1:22
know, it makes sense that we're we're tackling this at some point. In
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fact, there is one that does this. It's called Saver and it is
1:30
one that I subscribe to there and have for a long time. Yeah,
1:33
it's a fun one. So I guess bonus recommend at the top of this
1:37
if you're interested in a food show. I mean they mostly look at just
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sort of talk about food items, but they also have included things like discussions
1:45
of practices around food, including the one we have today. But before we
1:49
get into that, I would like to say, if you're joining us for
1:52
the first time, thank you for being here. We're so happy to have
1:55
you. Welcome to the show. If you'd like to support what we do,
1:57
then you can join us on Patreon, pick up some merched like and
2:00
subscribe. We have a rating and review the things that like YouTubers say and
2:05
influencers and that and all that. Also, it is very close to Happy
2:08
New Year ish, I mean it was a couple of days ago, but
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Happy New Year. Thanks for being here. At the beginning of the year.
2:14
Our first episode for twenty twenty four. Yeah, welcome to twenty twenty
2:16
four. Please, just as a general recommendation, do not say this is
2:22
going to be your year, because like people said to do that and then
2:25
it messes everybody else's year up. So just say I'm gonna enjoy my year.
2:30
That's perfectly fine. Everyone said that at the beginning of twenty twenty and
2:34
look what happened. Yeah, so thanks, I guess for that. I
2:37
mean, somebody said that God sent a curse because some band released an album,
2:42
and that's what that was. But sure, I don't know. I
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digress. More importantly, it is j R. R. Tolkien Day,
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huge fan thank you for Lord of the Rings and all of that fun stuff.
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There's an accidental tie in between that and some things we'll talk about in
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today's episode, which is fun. That's fun. It is also huge Humliation
3:00
Day. Unrelated, but I actually so I had to look into this because
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I was like, what does that mean? And it's not what it sounds
3:07
like. It actually has to do with humility, being humble, being sort
3:10
of self taken, some perspective, some self perspective, and that sort of
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thing. So that's Humiliation Day. Okay, that makes sense. Okay,
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but it's Women Rock Day and I love that. Yes, it is also
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International Mind Body Wellness Day, so be well in your mind and body.
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Yeah, those two very separate things. As we've established in the show,
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the mind and the body are two very different things, right. It's also
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Festival of Sleep Day, which sounds like the most relaxing and most boring festival
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to go to. But I love that, right, Like, I'm not
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sure about sleeping next to and with a whole bunch of strangers. But they
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would be a very quiet festival, that's true. It would be as long
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as everybody brings their seapap machines and they don't snore too much, right Yeah,
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Yeah, there'd be a subtle hum of snoring going on for sure,
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but yeah, for the most part, relative to most festivals, a very
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quiet festival. Yes, it is Fruitcake Toss Day, celebrating apparently the tradition
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of making fruitcake and then throwing it away because nobody likes it. I think
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we can collectively agree maybe we don't need to make fruitcake? Sure, Like
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why waste it? Why waste exactly? Why waste? Stop bothering? Stop?
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Yeah, stop bothering. It's also chocolate covered cherry Day, which is
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fun. I like that yum. And you know, we've been doing this
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celebrating the anniversaries of things for a year, a little lovery year maybe,
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so we'll acknowledge that, like what the month celebrates doesn't really change, and
4:39
we'll try and switch it up and just you know, you'll get some new
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ones over time. This one I don't think we've mentioned, but a lot
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of people celebrate dry January. So if that's if that's you, then then
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good luck. Enjoy your sobriety for the month. Yeah, it will do
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wonders for your health and brain. Yeah. Absolutely, And if you're not
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sure of what we're talking about there, check out our out episode on alcohol
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and how that episode, like how that impacts you. Yes, not dry
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as and don't drink water or don't take a shower, just just liquor.
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You're allowed to go swimming, yes, like you you could do that and
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definitely shower, but yeah, don't drink liquor. It's also Bread machine Baking
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Month. What does that mean? Bread machine Baking Month. This month long
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observance is a toast to the convenience and creativity that bread machines bring into our
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kitchens, so you can use bread machines to make all sorts of different kinds
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of breads and certain baked goods. So I think it is intended to inspire
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people to pull that dusty bread machine out of your cabinet or whatever and try
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and making something for January and then put it back for a year. I
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mean, wash it first, at least if it's dusty, that's true.
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Yeah, don't need dusty bread. That's just only dusty bread. No thanks,
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Okay, we're actually not talking about bread or any of those other holidays
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except kind of j R. R. Tolkien because in j. R.
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R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books, in the Hobbit Hobbits are these
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fantastical creatures, in case you're not familiar with a need to consume, apparently
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just tremendous amount of calories. Sure, Hobbits traditionally and regularly consume six to
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seven full meals every day. Although one of them is a little bit lighter,
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it is a heavy day. So essentially the schedule that lou they follow
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ish is breakfast around seven am, second breakfast around nine am, which again
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is a whole nother breakfast eleven z's, which is eleven am. As one
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might assume lunches one pm, afternoon tea three pm, dinner six pm,
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and then supper nine pm. That's a lot of food. Yeah, And
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also I could imagine like eating a full meal every two hours, I would
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be miserable. It feels like that would be the case, right, Yeah,
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But I mean we're not hobbits, That's what I was going to say.
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It's like, I'm not a hobbit. I'm definitely more of an orc
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at this point in time. So just with how my lifestyle is going.
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Just to be clear, this is not a dieting episode, and also don't
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take health advice from us, because that is not in our particular area of
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expertise. We are just giving you information about kind of the behaviors around why
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people do this particular thing. Yes, I don't think we have discussed yet,
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but what we're talking about is the tradition of eating three square meals a
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day, what that means, where it came from, and how it exists
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in other cultures around the world, et cetera. Like why did we land
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on three meals a day? Is this a biological imperative, a necessity?
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For being human. We'll sort of dig in on that sort of thing,
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and it's not a necessity for hobbits. There is a bit more extreme than
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that, more than twice as many in fact. But we're not hobbits.
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But it was J. R. R. Tolkien Day, so may as
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well, maybe that was an accidental coincidence. Actually, yeah, I'm rambling.
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Now, let's get into it. Yes, so let's travel back in
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time to visit our ancient ancestors living in small packs of roaming tribes. They
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mostly forage for berries, nuts, in anything that grows in the ground that
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we can eat. Some will go out looking for animals to hunt, although
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they are unlikely to bring back very much on a regular basis. Hunting is
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not an efficient thing. Sometimes yeah, I mean they try and sometimes they're
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successful, but most evidence suggests that most galleries came from food that they foraged,
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because well, it's not very fast, it does not run or easily.
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It's easy to catch a strawberry. So we're back in time here,
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we're visiting our ancient peoples. They're sort of living in these small groups.
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They rise with the sun and then do they gather around the fire for some
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coffee and eggs. Nope, they pretty much immediately start preparing for their food
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obtaining activities for the day, their food seeking and gathering. They need to
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use all of the daylight that they can to gather and store and therefore share
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food amongst the entire group to ensure that the group survives and thrives and is
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able to, if possible, grow and be successful. So their whole day
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is like, get up as soon as the sun is up, spend the
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whole day getting and obtaining food, and to repeat next day. Yeah,
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I mean it sounds like there wasn't much time for reading. There was not
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much time for reading or making music or making merry. No, no,
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no, no, not until we invented some technology for this. So until
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we invented enough technology to ensure food was no longer scarce, everything humans did
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was largely oriented around constantly obtaining food. When battles were fought, it was
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over food, and food was a primary kind of bartering tool until currency was
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developed to buy food. So food is a kind of a if you hadn't
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noticed, a very important thing to us, and societal and government infrastructure shaped
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it kind of grew and developed, and it was shaped by the efficiency of
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food aggregation by large numbers of people. So food food, food, food,
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food, food, food, food food. Basically, the reason that
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we can do the things that we do is because we've created systems and technologies
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to support the growth of food, so the food is less scarce, and
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so as food becomes less scarce, we have more time to do other things.
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If, yeah, if we don't have a steady and readily available supply
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of food, everyone's job is food. Right. Once we do have a
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steady, readily available supply of food, then people's time is now freed up
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to do other things, and we'll get to talk about more of that.
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Right. But thinking about this, so we're back here, as we said,
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they don't probably eat breakfast. What they did is they went out and
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they gathered and primarily then brought things back and then they would eat and you
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know, again repeat. But in the past, maybe not that far back,
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But did people eat three meals a day? They might be wondering,
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like, did people always eat three meals a day? Maybe they ate more,
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Maybe they ate like six meals a day like cobbits. Maybe they're more
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like little snacks spread out, or they're just kind of grazed they ate whatever
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food was available, Maybe they ate less often, maybe it was just once
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per day. Can we just sort of into it a guess about what they
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might have done, And that sort of implies is the three meals a day
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some kind of biological imperative that we more or less have situated our daily activities
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around. It's an interesting thing when you really, I guess maybe if you're
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so used to kind of creating a pattern of behavior around this, you don't
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really think about why that pattern has started to grow up unless you're us on
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the show and you go, why do we do that? Yeah? And
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that's how we end up here. We'll like little kids, Yeah, why
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do we have breakfast lunch at dinner? Yeah we're kids, but we're in
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our like almost forty and we're going, why do we do that? Oh,
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it's almost your birthday. Huh. It's in between time and between your
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birthday and my birthday where you're older than me by a little bit. That's
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right, But it's kind of that this is what we do, Like we're
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trying to figure this out, and so another question we could ask is like
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whether this is based on an interval which we start to feel naturally hungry and
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start to create calories and do all that stuff. Like there's just there's all
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these questions that kind of come out of this specific behavior that we engage with.
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Another one that occurred to me is asking, well, what is a
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meal? What do we count as a meal? And also when we say
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meal like something that you sit down and eat, does that have overlap with
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meal as in like grains and cereals and things like that, because those are
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things that we sit down and eat. Actually, No, those two words
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developed from completely different roots and meanings. So I saw several words for this.
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I saw malu and malay and this means to crush or grind, and
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this essentially sort of meant to talk about like grains being crushed and ground.
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And that was meal like corn meal or you know, cereal and that sort
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of things, you know, mealy type foods, oat meal as you know,
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any grainy meal. That's sort of where that one evolved from. Where
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meal, where we're talking about sitting down and eating something with that was amount
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of food that actually referred to time. It just meant a point in time
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or on occasion, it was time for something. Then this largely came from
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vikings as a Frisian word, and so they had the word meal meaning essentially
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time that kind of started to mean time that you ate. But most,
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if we're just talking about what a meal means in general, most simply defined
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meal as the consumption of food stuffs. Even a snack is technically a meal
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by the definition of you sat down, or you didn't even don't have to
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sit, you decided to take time to consume food items meal. I think
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there are a couple of questions I would ask in that is I've got I've
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got three okay, like kind of thoughts on this. I'll do my best.
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Maybe you don't have to answer, maybe we can just have a discussion
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around it. So, okay. The word melee, which means to crush
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into grind. I wonder if the crushing grind part stayed and was used for
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like melee weapons, because melee weapons are designed to kind of like crushing grind
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people. I guess maybe, right. Yeah, So that's my first One
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second is that I didn't realize how much I hated the word meal until you
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said it. Said it like ten times in a row. You said it
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so many times, and I realized how much I hate it, and I
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think, I I this is my own stuff where I realize that the word
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meal is just full of soft sounds and just like soft word like you know,
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meal versus like eat. Like eat is a good word because it like
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and it has that hard continent sounds. So that's just I've I noticed that
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about myself as I got older, and so maybe that's just kind of my
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own thing. And the third thing is I wonder how often when we are
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doing episodes that we get ads that are food related. All right, maybe
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that was a food related ad, but either way, we're back. You
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know, it's kind of funny you mentioned the word meal, and for me
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it's actually the word snack. And you wouldn't think because the hard consonants that
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are in there, that they would be so unappealing. And I don't know
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what it is, but it's something about that word that I just hate.
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Well, maybe it's the fact that it's been co opted by a generation of
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people calling other people snacks. Maybe maybe, Okay, getting back on track,
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we've sort of been moving through history albeit and sort of jumps and starts
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and fits and spurts and et cetera. All the words before any kind of
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industrial industrialization of food production. What you can mostly expect in these tribes and
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these sort of roaming tribes was that they ate when they were hungry if they
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had food that was available. So this may have been something like those six
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small snacks or six small meals per day, or it might have looked more
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like one large meal per day. Where they were and their access to food
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and their group's food demands, whatever they might be, would essentially inform how
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much and when they ate. Most likely, in most instances it was probably
15:52
about one large meal per day, But essentially they ate when they were hungry,
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and when they were hungry was influenced to buy a variety of factors we'll
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talk about in a bit. Before artificial light, people had to rise and
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set with the sun. And as a side note, they likely slept longer
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than we do now. So you know, thanks capitalism for making it so
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that we have to sleep much less than our ancestors did. Yeah, we
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have all this light now and it just allows us to not get any sleep,
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which is killing us. I don't know we live longer, but I
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guess maybe there's no savors to tigers either, so we have a different we
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have a different set of circumstances fair ancient Romans, this came up a lot
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and looking up a lot of information about this episode. Ancient Romans ate about
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once per day around noon. They called this dinner. They considered it gluttonous
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to eat before or in addition to that meal, So essentially they just had
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their one noon ish meal that they that they called dinner, and it was
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believed that eating at other times was not only gluttonous but also bad for healthy
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digestion and just your overall well being. So they were essentially a nation of
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people doing intermittent fasting. Yeah, that's wild. Now, in the Middle
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Ages, largely influenced by religion, people were not supposed to eat before mass,
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so again they would likely eat a large meal in the middle of the
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day, possibly a lighter snack toward the end of the day before bed,
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So you kind of had two opportunities to eat during the day, but it
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was based on religious practices. Yeah, because they would set aside their time
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to do all their warship in the morning, it would take almost all morning,
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and then they would eat afterward, and that was their primary sort of
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middle of the day meal or snack, the word lunch that we now use
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to refer to and at least in English, the meal that people consume in
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the middle of the day may have evolved from a word called nunchin mean none,
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sort of referring to noon. So I was actually wondering, maybe it's
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supposed to be pronounced nunchin. Yeah. And some of it suggested that the
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word lump referred to something like a piece of bread or ease that you might
18:00
eat for a snack, and that they combined lump with nunchein to give us
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luncheon, which is where we started to get lunch from. I also don't
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like the word lump. Apparently it's the soft contence for you. I think
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I think that one has more of a historical context for me. I think
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I got so tired of hearing the presidents of the United States of America seeing
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lump on the radio when we were kids, like I just can't, I
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can't do it anymore. Now, dinner was a common word for lunch,
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and sometimes lunch is used in place of the word dinner to refer to a
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large meal in the evening. It doesn't happen as often today, I don't
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think, but it is something that you'll find every now and again where lunch
18:41
and dinner are used interchangeably. Have you ever used dinner to refer to like
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a midday meal? No, boy, your expression was really good there,
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dare you don't be ridiculous to you or your family use suppered or refer to
18:59
like an evening No. So, I actually this is something that as I
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was growing up, I understood supper to be a very Southern term. And
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my family is not a very Southern family. Like my mom was raised in
19:11
Daytona, but my dad's from Pittsburgh, Like I grew up in kind of
19:15
like a very northern style family, and so supper never came up at all.
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But I think I don't know if that has anything to do with anything.
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We just never used the word supper. Okay, gotcha. Yeah,
19:25
my dad did sometimes use that word, but I was never clear if he
19:30
meant dinner or something different from that. It seems like maybe he was expecting
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another meal after dinner. I wasn't totally sure, or maybe it was like
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a light meal that preceded dinner. Yeah, it does seem like people use
19:42
it interchangeably with dinner, and almost always to refer to a nighttime or evening
19:48
time. Meal of some sort. Yeah, that makes sense. I could
19:52
see that. Yeah, it's a word, It's not something that came up
19:53
in my family like at all. Yeah. I don't definitely don't use it
19:57
now, but I'm sure some people still do. Yeah, hey, listeners,
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if you do, you should write it and tell us which one you
20:03
prefer and how you use it. Yeah. I love that. And if
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you ever say dinner to me in a midday meal instead of lunch, that
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would also be interesting. Yeah. Yeah, tell us your family habit.
20:14
She might mock you quietly, though I will not mock you on the air
20:17
for sure. Okay, So we've talked about lunch, we've talked about dinner
20:22
a little bit, and we'll get more into how those got shaped up.
20:26
The idea of breakfast as an early first meal was actually very uncommon throughout history.
20:33
That was the most recent addition to the scheduled meals per day routine that
20:38
we've gotten into. Do you think that's why there were so many wars before?
20:42
Is because people were angry in the morning and they didn't have the greatest
20:45
meal of the day, which was breakfast. Like I didn't get coffee and
20:49
eggs and bacon like I am going to killed whoever, Yeah, that's right.
20:57
So for most it's the largest and probably only, or at least most
21:02
important meal was dinner meaning lunch, so that noon meal was the most important
21:07
meal of the day, and particularly wealthy made a large affair out of their
21:11
dinners with customary rituals and a lavish, rambunctious party atmosphere. Again dinners standing
21:18
in for lunch. Yes, obviously most people that was about when they were
21:22
going to be eating. But the workday also did start to shape this so
21:26
as we moved more and more into what might be considered a work day,
21:30
where people worked to earn a wage to pay for various things, their houses,
21:34
their rent, their meals, et cetera. Or going to school was
21:38
another one actually, because as schooling and education started to become an institutionalized and
21:45
regularly scheduled activity, people then went to school almost like a work day.
21:48
They would leave the house at a time, they'd go there for a time,
21:52
they'd come home, and when they are working going to school, they
21:55
might take a break around the midday point in which they would take depending on
22:00
where you're at in time and geographically, they would get between fifteen minutes and
22:04
an hour before returning to their activities. Obviously, some places have much longer.
22:10
They'll take two hour breaks as pretty standard fair around for the midday.
22:14
But around the time that all of this was shaping up, that was about
22:17
what the midday break looked like. Yeah, and if you're at Amazon,
22:19
they've completely eliminated this, so don't worry about it, right, No breaks,
22:25
no lunches, no dinners, no anything. Ah, we only ship
22:29
food, we don't eat it here. Now. This actually took the emphasis
22:33
off of lunch and dinner as the primary meal and instead the later meal,
22:36
supper, when people would have time to prepare and eat most of their calories,
22:38
became hardier and larger. Essentially, dinner lunch was pushed back further and
22:44
further into the evening until it was the last final large meal of the day.
22:48
But people weren't going to just not eat all day until dinner. That
22:52
was unacceptable for many people, right, And so that's where they got this
22:55
sort of luncheon thing. They would have a lump of bread or cheese that
23:00
they would have a break during their workday and they would consume whatever it was.
23:04
We'll get talking about that a bit more in a second, but in
23:07
the seventeenth century, it started to become popular among the wealthy to have coffee
23:12
or tea with eggs for breakfast or other things. Like. There was plenty
23:17
of things that they might have, but it was during the seventeenth century that
23:19
they started to actually consume some of their calories earlier in the day upon waking
23:26
in sort of a with the sunrise. It's wild to think that coffee,
23:30
like, I mean, not that coffee isn't a luxury, but like thinking
23:33
of it as being like an actual like something that people could only access if
23:37
you had a lot of money. Yeah, now you can get like vulgius
23:40
crystals and just kind of dump that into a cuple of water and you're like,
23:44
hey, here's coffee. I guess it's just kind of interesting to think
23:47
that how much we've evolved and how much like coffee has become kind of like
23:51
a common commodity compared to what it used to be. Yeah, at least
23:53
right now, we'll see, at least right now until we farm all that
23:57
out, So be mindful of the coffee you drag. Now. As industrialization
24:00
increased in the eighteen hundreds, it became necessary for workers to have some food
24:04
before going to their day long jobs. So they found that people weren't as
24:10
productive if they had worked through the entire day without sustenance, and it made
24:12
more financial sense to give workers a break in the middle of the day to
24:17
eat. And also some of the employers could sell their employees lunch thereby recouping
24:22
their losses. Those sneaky bastards. So thanks capitalism for that. Where they
24:26
are, you know, figuring out ways that just kind of bleed the worker
24:30
dry, that's yeah. Yeah, it was like, all right, fine,
24:36
you'll get a lunch break because then you're more productive in the afternoon.
24:38
But on your lunch break, you're going to pay me to eat food.
24:41
Yeah, I mean yeah, I think it's blatantly imparable. What was going
24:45
on there? Yeah, okay, so we're moving up into the sort of
24:49
the eighteen hundreds nineteen hundreds were getting around. Their technology also found more ways
24:55
to preserve food and make it easier to obtain. You know, these factories
25:00
could start to produce food on mass from just raw ingredients. Cereals were starting
25:04
to be developed that would last a long time and were easy to prepare.
25:07
The best food. Yes, there was rapid heating and processing and the early
25:12
nineteen hundreds, we got toasters so that people could easily you know, toast
25:15
food, and very quickly things like obviously bread for toast. Food storage got
25:21
better. They started to have refrigeration and other preservation techniques that would keep food
25:26
longer, and packaging as it started to develop also to a small extent early
25:32
on, meant that people could essentially quickly obtain easy to consume meals right away
25:38
early in the morning. So it became easier to have food be available because
25:42
it lasted longer, it could be protected from the air and of the things
25:48
externally, and it could be eaten, you know, almost on the go.
25:52
It could just be a quick thing that you could get to those calories
25:55
right out the door if you will. Yeah, I bet you didn't know.
25:57
This was a history of the lunch able, folks, That's right.
26:03
That's what all this is leading up to, is like, it's not three
26:04
meals a day, We're just it's the secret history of the lunchable and how
26:07
he got here the secret. Now, by the nineteen hundred's, not only
26:12
was breakfast widely adopted by most, it was now being called the most important
26:18
meal of the day, which I absolutely subscribe to that idea. That is
26:22
easily the most important meal a day for me, mostly because it has coffee.
26:26
It is my favorite for sure. If I could only choose one meal
26:29
a day to have, it would be breakfast. This is definitely a thing.
26:33
I was listening to a podcast where they were talking. It was a
26:36
band coming out of Japan, who was a hardcore band coming out of Japan
26:38
who was touring Japan a Japan, and they were like, they had ranked
26:44
all their favorite fast food the American fast food when they got here. Oh
26:47
fun, and he said that it was He's specifically said on the show it
26:52
was dishonorable to eat breakfast food at night, so he refused to eat breakfast
26:56
food at night. And I just thought it was really fascinating to be like
26:57
how he was just absolutely disgusted that anybody would even consider eating breakfast food at
27:03
night. Wow, there is actually I didn't think about this in preparing for
27:07
this discussion, but it would probably be at least worth a mini episode down
27:11
the road to talk about why we eat certain foods at certain times. Again,
27:18
thinking about about going back in time, like people ate whatever they could
27:22
eat whenever they could eat it. Essentially right, And so the idea that
27:27
we've now morphed into a point where not only do we have specific foods that
27:32
are designated for times of the day and specific meals that are regimented and scheduled
27:37
for those times, but now it's dishonorable not to adhere to that schedule.
27:44
Is so many leaps and bounds beyond the sort of biological necessity of trying to
27:51
sustain oneself and feed, you know, provide nutrients to one's own body.
27:56
Yeah, I'm not sure if he was saying it a jest, but it
27:57
was very funny to think, and like sure pretty adamant about never like his
28:02
favorite restaurant in the United States was Denny's, but he would not eat Dennis
28:06
at night. Well, and I've heard people make a big deal out of
28:10
the like breakfast for dinner as sort of maybe a one time, big event
28:15
thing that you might do, because apparently you can only have eggs, bacon,
28:18
toast, or cereal in the morning and any other time it's an abomination.
28:22
And if you were to have like spaghetti for breakfast, it'd be like,
28:26
what are you doing, you crazy monster? Don't do that. Those
28:30
are all arbitrary rules they're all totally by humans. Honestly, one of my
28:34
favorite breakfasts is like a big salad with just every vegetable you can think of
28:40
it. I just throw everything in there, and that was a really really
28:44
good breakfast. Also make it spicy af Yeah that's I'll also eat candy for
28:48
breakfast, like I had no I have no qualm for that, Like I
28:51
mean muffin, like muffins, like I had a TALKOUCHI muffet and it's bandy
28:55
this morning, which is straight up candy. Yeah, it's cake. Is
28:57
I just had cake for breakfast, like it's There are no rules, like
29:00
we make rules. There are no rules. Yeah, there are no rules,
29:03
but unfortunately there are ads. Okay, let's get back to our discussion
29:15
here on the evolution, if you will, of the meals per day paradigm
29:22
as it currently exists. So we talked about the fact that breakfast is sort
29:26
of in the early nineteen hundreds, early nineteen twenties and thirties ish now being
29:30
deemed the most important meal of the day, and we are now well past
29:36
the point at which artificial lights have come into our world and played a huge
29:40
role in how much more we can extend our activities because we can stretch lighting
29:47
well past the point at which it would naturally be available via the sun.
29:52
And so that has also provided an opportunity for more food preparation. And in
29:56
addition to that, we've got more food prepar technologies. We've got we're getting
30:02
into ovens and microwaves and different stovetops and all kinds of technologies that can prepare
30:08
food in different ways. And dinner or lunch started getting pushed well passed again,
30:15
Dinners now the evening thing getting well past sunset where it was most likely
30:19
happening most of the time, and into the evening and sometimes quite late into
30:23
the evening. Well, And with all that, I think it's really important
30:26
to recognize that, like, as we develop new technologies to make it easier
30:30
to prepare food, it frees up more time to do other things. Like
30:33
that's why we're all so busy all the time, is because we don't have
30:37
to spend all of our time gathering wood to make a fire and to start
30:41
the fire and to burn the fire and do all those things to just make
30:44
the meal that we've been hunting for all day. Like, we have freedom
30:47
so much time just by developing technologies to make our lives easier. But it's
30:51
just a fascinating thing to think about. And maybe you never thought about that.
30:53
Maybe you're going, oh, this toaster sucks. It's like, well,
30:56
you would have had to leave that bread out in the sun the toast
31:00
for hours, So be happy. So uh, you know, be happy
31:07
that you have a toaster. The ritual of a midday lunch as a break
31:11
from work became the standard in industrialized countries to the point of being thought of
31:15
as essentially necessary to the routine. So essentially what's happened is lunch, midday
31:21
lunch is now built into schedules and built into kind of the structure of the
31:26
day because it has become and it also has become a legal right true in
31:30
a lot of places, because it has become such an important part of that
31:33
structure for the day. Yeah, so this is how we got three meals
31:37
per day, largely through a combination of the four horses of the apocalypse industrialization,
31:42
exploitation, religion, and capitalism. Mailed it. That's the end of
31:52
the show. There's nothing funnier than that. That's the best thing that I've
31:55
ever heard things. But yeah, I mean, those are the forces that
31:59
essentially drove of the conditions under which we were sort of forced to make that
32:02
choice where the three meals more or less fit around those schedules, and that
32:07
just became ritual to the point that we then saw the three meals as essential
32:13
to our daily activities. Right. And so this regimented schedule of eating at
32:16
designated periods of time of these named eating events breakfast, lunch, and dinner
32:22
or supper was even thought to be an outcome of sophistication and progress by elitist
32:25
Europeans and therefore considered emblematic of a civilized culture. And here's where colonization comes
32:31
in, right. So, like everything else, this tradition of three meals
32:35
per day has some roots in racism, yep. And essentially as colonization spread,
32:42
that was imposed upon the indigenous peoples of the places that they went basically
32:47
saying, in addition to all the other things that were bringing with us,
32:52
I mean religion and government and money and jails and various a variety of other
32:58
cultural things, they all came in and said, we eat three meals a
33:01
day at these times because we are these sophisticated, highly evolved creatures. You
33:07
will also do that now and sort of forced that onto the indigenous peoples and
33:12
other cultures around the world. Speaking of other places around the world, we
33:15
can actually talk a little bit about what this looks like around the world.
33:19
Yeah. So basically what you're saying is breakfast is racist. No, I'm
33:24
just going to say three meals a day. Yes, the expectation, the
33:30
expectation of the expectation of other culture who's eating three meals a day because it
33:36
is the civil quote unquote civilized way to do things is a significant problem.
33:39
Yes, imposed by columns. Yeah, somebody's gonna take that sound by and
33:43
be like, oh, lunch is racist. So Western European colonization has infected
33:46
a huge amount of the world. If you hadn't noticed that, and if
33:50
you hadn't noticed that, then maybe you're part of the places that did that.
33:52
But the practice of three meals per day spread when you're wherever Europeans went.
33:58
So if Europeans showed up where three meals a day ended up being part
34:01
of the huge amount of changes that were implemented in those areas, often yeah
34:06
so, and they found groups that didn't have the three meals per day,
34:08
and again those other European traditions. They considered them savage, barbaric, uncivilized,
34:14
and the Europeans believed then that it was well within their rights to impose
34:17
European culture on those others, including the three meals a day idea that they'd
34:23
been practicing. When we say Europeans, I think it's really important to say
34:27
like Western Europeans. True. Yeah, yeah, mostly Western Europeans, like
34:30
mostly white Europeans, because if you go to Italy, there's like some pretty
34:35
nice breaks during the day that are like not necessarily like a three meals a
34:38
day type of thing. But we'll kind of unpack this a little bit.
34:42
Yeah, most countries around the world practice a version of three meals a day,
34:44
the Czoch Republic, Dominican Republic, Laos, China, pretty much all
34:47
European countries. Of course, in South Korea, and specifically South Korea had
34:52
a twenty fourteen cooking TV show called three Meals a Day. So it's made
34:55
it so far, it's made it out into the Peninsula of South yep.
35:00
Some countries have four meals per day, Greece and Argentina, which have included
35:06
essentially an afternoon snack that's sort of a post lunch meal between lunch and dinner.
35:12
Yeah, and some countries only do two meals a day. Jamaica and
35:15
parts of Sirius specifically look at just having two meals a day regularly. Yeah.
35:20
So, as we said, there's really you might have thought, like,
35:22
we get hungry maybe approximately every five ish hours. Yeah, but that's
35:27
actually not really the case. There's no biological reason to have three meals a
35:30
day. Some have actually pointed out that sticking to that routine of three meals
35:36
a day might increase the likelihood of OBCD and overeating by prompting people to eat
35:40
when they're not actually hungry, or to eat more than they would just because
35:45
it's sort of supposed to be a meal, whatever that is. Yeah,
35:49
and many have even suggested that smaller meals throughout the day might work better for
35:53
some people, or just a couple of large meals in the day might work
35:57
better for some people and have them make more intense, tensional, and healthier
36:00
choices about their own food and their own habits around food, rather than saying
36:06
like, these are the designated times and rituals around specific meals. And the
36:12
shift in circumstances around globalization has also more or less started to erode the tradition
36:15
of three meals per day. So in countries with abundance, more and more
36:20
millennials and gen zers are skiving breakfast or opting for more on the go foods
36:23
and affordable snacks when they are available. So the kind of quote unquote traditional
36:28
structure of three meals a day is starting to kind of become a thing of
36:30
the past. Yeah, even in places where it was largely developed by those
36:35
people, right, it's starting to crumble a little bit. And because of
36:37
this, there's just been an enormous increase in prepackaged snacks and highly preserved foods
36:45
and the market for that because of many factors. One is the cost of
36:49
food and restaurants is so high, the inconvenience and lack of time to prepare
36:53
food in this extraordinarily busy world that people are expected to keep up with and
36:58
their jobs in school, et cetera. And of course just then the convenience
37:01
of having some kind of thing that you can quickly tear open a package,
37:05
eat a good one hundred and twenty or two hundred calorie thing, and keep
37:09
moving and you spend very little time on it. And so it's really removed
37:14
food as the operative force that has people making decisions about what they eat and
37:20
what it means to spend any time eating or doing anything around food. It's
37:23
really just a means to an end for a lot of these people because of
37:28
the circumstances we find ourselves in, for better or for worse, right,
37:31
and so the traditional meal structures that we've been talking about quote unquote traditional and
37:36
all of those things that we've been discussing, it's breaking down as the indelible
37:39
weight of capitalism drives ever more efficient productivity and drive down the affordability of food.
37:45
So, like we're finding that people are because of their circumstances and because
37:51
of how much they're working or because of what the expectations are, they're preparing
37:54
less meals, they're grabbing more on the go foods, they're not going to
37:58
restaurants as much they are. It's a very non linear, non structural way
38:04
to eat food. Now, Yeah, I kind of had the thought that
38:07
this sort of conservative interpretation of all of this is like all these darn millennials
38:15
and these young people and these these liberal waves are eroding our sacred institutions like
38:21
three meals a day and at the same time, the thing that they worship,
38:25
capitalism is pretty much the thing that's driving that change. Right, So
38:30
it's sort of like pointing in a mirror, friend, You're right, Like
38:35
it's they don't realize that, not that these things are I guess mutually exclusive.
38:39
They're not. There's not like a Venn diagram where it's capitalism three meals
38:43
a day, or like a perfect circle over each other. It's not.
38:45
It's certainly not that. No, But like the circumstance in which that people
38:49
are changing their eating habits is based on and based around the circumstances that capitalism
38:53
is created. Right, perfectly said, I think that is a really kind
38:59
of unique thing to think about, when you know, when people talk about
39:01
like, oh, capitalism has nothing to do with this, well, actually,
39:05
right when you think about it, you know, I mean, how
39:07
many of us and I dear listeners don't take this as a slight because I
39:10
have done this myself, but how many of us have skipped a meal at
39:15
work because we were either too busy to eat and we just grabbed a quick
39:19
snack and we're eating during like a maybe a meeting or something like that.
39:22
Yeah, yeah, I mean not many of us are taking lunch breaks anymore.
39:25
Yeah, and that's because of maybe the demands of our jobs, maybe
39:29
it's the demands of our lives, whatever it is. We're skipping meals not
39:34
because it's a necessity, not because we want to, but maybe it's a
39:37
necessity because of our current circumstances. Yeah. I know a lot of people
39:40
who they are like, I have to work through my lunch, or I
39:44
want to work through my lunch so that I can get this thing done,
39:47
or you know, just the other day I had I had so much to
39:51
do that I decided it was best that I just worked through my lunch.
39:53
And the expectation we have, you know, people are expected to answer emails
39:59
and you know, responds to all of these extracurricular things that are part of
40:02
their job but for which they're not being paid and yet are expected to perform.
40:07
And so employers have gotten really good at figuring out how to essentially get
40:12
a bunch of extra free work. And that means that people are making the
40:15
choice to skip through many of those meals and the opportunities they would have to
40:20
eat, or they're opting for something really quick, like just a snack that's
40:23
a prepackaged thing they can quickly unwrap and consume. Yeah, and so you
40:28
know, I'm wondering, you know, if you're skipping meals, if you're
40:30
also planning to skip these ads. Okay, we're back from those ads that
40:42
you may or may not have heard, and we're going to dig in a
40:46
little bit more on talking. I think understanding psychologically and biologically the pressures of
40:52
three meals a day, what that means, and how we sort of respond
40:57
to it and are shaped by it. Yeah. Now, people are actually
41:00
going to get hungry or get hungry after enough time has passed without consuming food.
41:04
I mean, and everybody has a different kind of time frame for that
41:07
based on a lot of different things, but context and history significantly impact the
41:10
extent to which we start to feel hungry at certain intervals. So you know,
41:14
for me, I eat breakfast at about eight this morning. Right now
41:17
it is about twelve thirty, and by the time we're done recording this,
41:21
I will probably eat lunch. So like, I can go about that much
41:24
time where I'm like, okay, I can eat, you know, it
41:27
helps those I drink a lot of coffee, so I don't eat as much
41:30
as maybe somebody my size might look like they eat there you go, But
41:35
yeah, I mean, our bodies essentially respond to the pressures we place upon
41:38
them. People who have more muscle and who generally expend more energy will feel
41:44
hungrier more often. In general. However, people who eat during more spaced
41:49
out intervals, maybe only in the morning or only in the afternoon, sort
41:52
of that intermint and fasting thing, they will actually stop experiencing hunger as a
41:57
significant motivator during non food designated times after only a few days of that routine,
42:01
even if they are active and more heavily muscled. Which is to say,
42:06
we just get used to whatever routine we get into, and it can
42:09
be uncomfortable for a few days, but you'd be amazed at how quickly you
42:14
settle into it. So if you're someone who constantly skips breakfast, you kind
42:16
of will stop feeling hungry around the time that you would be having breakfast,
42:21
and you won't start to feel hungry until you're getting closer to the time that
42:23
you'd normally have lunch. Now, you can't push that out indefinitely. You
42:27
can't just go with days without food and not expect to feel hungry during that.
42:30
But and in terms of like a twenty four hours period thinking about our
42:35
sleep and whatnot. We're essentially going to respond to what we've sort of put
42:38
ourselves through, what we're used to, what our routine has taught our bodies
42:43
to do. It's interesting because, like I think about like my routines versus
42:46
like routines of everybody in my house, and everybody eats breakfast at a different
42:50
time if they eat breakfast at all. My son eats breakfast later, I
42:52
eat earlier, and my wife and daughter do not eat breakfast at all.
42:57
Right, So our history around routine of food, as well as the current
43:00
surroundings, that's all going to drive our food seating behavior as much as any
43:05
hormone or any other physical features. So it's kind of like they say this
43:08
a lot with like drug use, certain types of drugs, Like if you
43:12
want to have a good experience around certain types of drug use, then it's
43:15
all about set and setting right. And food is absolutely like that too.
43:17
So when we are around delicious looking, well prepared foods and we're in a
43:21
comfortable space, we might start feeling hungry and we're going to eat, or
43:23
at least choose to eat, simply because the opportunity presents itself. I mean,
43:27
there's many of us who have eaten because we're comfortable and maybe we're bored,
43:30
and so we're just going to snack on some stuff when we want to
43:32
and when we're busy, we're engaged, and we're happy, we might forget
43:36
to eat all together, way past the point at which we would normally eat
43:39
foods. So there's a lot of things that happen that are not just physiological
43:43
but or biological but also circumstantial that are going to influence the way that we
43:46
eat and how much we eat completely. And you think about cultural celebrations also
43:51
dictate how, when, where, and what kinds of food is chosen and
43:55
at what intervals. If you might think of fasting for Lent or or feasts
44:00
for Thanksgiving or Christmas, right, those are times that will also change the
44:06
circumstances that are of our sort of food choosing and seeking behaviors. Yeah,
44:09
at the time of this recording, we are recording on Christmas Eve. So
44:13
I know we said Happy New Year, but tomorrow Nay I go to my
44:15
parents' house and we're going to have Christmas tacos, because we have Christmas tacos
44:19
every year and it's great love that. Oh my god, Yeah, it's
44:22
amazing. And my dad, who has never never stoked about me being a
44:24
vegetarian, makes a vegetarian vat of like grut crumbles for the tacos and it's
44:30
so good, So I'm super stoked. Nice. The workday largely shaped the
44:34
opportunity for eating, thus giving us breakfast and late dinner, which was once
44:37
lunch, but biology more or less forced a break in the middle of the
44:39
day for lunch. So if these systems change, so too will our food
44:44
seeking. So what will end up happening is if you know our schedules shift
44:46
or change your alter then we're going to eat meals at different times a day
44:50
based around what our productivity schedules are. Yeah, we eat three meals a
44:53
day because it's expedient. It's baked into the fabric of our culture for many
44:59
around the world now, and we start practicing it at a very early age.
45:02
Otherwise we would likely eat at some other interval, possibly a very irregular
45:07
one. We might just eat a little bit every few hours. Would actually
45:10
not surprise me at all with the abundance of food that people would choose to
45:15
just space out a bunch of small meals rather than plan a few large ones
45:21
and have probably relatively equal calories in their overall daily intake. But this is
45:27
just the system we're currently in and that very well could change at some point,
45:30
so it is totally circumstantial, as you said. And you know,
45:35
people do have really complicated relationships with food for different reasons, and I think
45:38
it's important to kind of recognize that and provide awareness around that. But as
45:43
far as the three meals a day go, it's a completely arbitrary schedule that
45:47
we have created and have lived by for generations, and that's really the only
45:52
reason why we're still doing it, right. Yeah, I think that's what
45:55
we have to say about three meals a day and why we eat three meals
45:59
a day and we might not eat three meals a day. Is there anything
46:02
else that you would like to add before we get to recommendations and whatnot.
46:06
No, I think that covers that perfect well. If you're joining us by
46:08
the first time. We always like to recommend some things that we feel like
46:13
people might also enjoy that we like. Before we do that, we need
46:15
to thank the people who help make the show possible, which is our lovely
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Patreon people Mike m Megan, Leila, Mike T, Justin and Kim,
46:23
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46:29
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46:31
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46:35
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Otherwise, you can leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcast,
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47:06
we do, which is just a perfect gift for anyone for any occasion.
47:09
I think, yeah, I agree, I agree. I also couldn't do
47:13
this show without my team of people to help make this happen. Writing in
47:15
fact checking from Shane and myself. Production and music from Justin Greenhouse, and
47:20
our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and of course thank you all so
47:22
much for listening. Now before we let you go, we are going to
47:25
recommend some things we certainly are recommendations. I am recommending a TV show.
47:40
It is sort of anthology TV show, meaning that every season is its own
47:44
self contained story. It does not reference a previous season. You do not
47:47
need to have ever seen another season to make sense of the current season.
47:51
But this current season always tells a story that unfolds over ten or so episodes.
47:54
The current season is season five, and it is actually not quite done
48:00
yet, but I am just loving it. I think it is so super
48:02
well done. But it has a fantastic cast Juno Temple who is famous for
48:08
ted Lasso. It's also got Jennifer Jason Lee, John Hamm, and Joe
48:14
Keery who is from a Stranger Thing. So really fantastic cast, really well
48:17
done story. Been really enjoyed it. I know it's available on Hulu and
48:21
maybe some other service, but that's where I'm currently watching it. So if
48:23
you're interested, go check out Fargo season five. And honestly, most the
48:27
seasons are pretty good. So the first season is very very good. But
48:30
yeah, I like a lot of them. So go check out Fargo season
48:34
five if you're into sort of dark comedy drama things, crime noir, noir,
48:39
but yeah, that sort of thing. This is a continuation of the
48:44
movie, right, the Coen Brothers movie Fargo. Right, So the first
48:47
season was essentially a retelling of that movie, but way stretched out so could
48:52
encompass several episodes. I think that one was shorter, like five or six
48:54
episodes, and then every season since has been essentially its own, completely different
49:00
story. Okay, but it has the same sort of feel to it.
49:06
Okay, they're basically like saying, like what if we told Fargo, but
49:08
with this as the setting or with these as the characters, and so there's
49:13
a very similar vibe to the whole thing. But yes, it just like
49:15
that because of the of the Coen Brothers movie. I like that. That's
49:19
so fun. I'm gonna recommend a food stuff. So I was recently in
49:22
New York and I got to enjoy. So I'm not one to kind of
49:29
like get on to social media and then follow a trend that's on social media,
49:32
but this was one of those ones. When I got to New York,
49:35
I was like, I gotta try this because the food just looks delicious.
49:37
It's like one of those like ridiculous food things. This place is called
49:40
Angelina Bakery, and there is a bakery in Times Square and there is one
49:45
in Hell's Kitchen, so they're not too far from one another. Okay,
49:49
this place is if you get on Instagram and you see these giant croissants that
49:52
are like they look like circles their wheels. Yeah, and they're like stuffed
49:57
full of deliciousness. That's what this place is. So I got to go
50:01
and I got to try the pistachio croissant that is it's called a pistachio rolling
50:08
croissant and it is like a circle and it's full of like a pistachio cream
50:12
and it's like dipped in white chocolate with like pistaschio sprinkled on it. And
50:16
it was the best croissant I've ever had in my life. Wow. Got
50:20
to try some of their Facasha bread, got to try all the stuff,
50:22
and you know, as somebody who likes just breakfast stuff and food stuff and
50:28
bread stuff, this was the place to be. And the coffee was really
50:30
good. I have dreamt of this place every day since I left New York,
50:37
so it was that good. They do pasta, they do cold sandwiches,
50:40
they do pizzas. They also do bombaloons, which are like these big
50:45
puffy Italian doughnuts that are like full of like this different like different creams and
50:50
stuff, like they have a Boston cream and they have all that stuff.
50:52
So it was delicious and I think about it a lot, and I can't
50:54
wait to go back or maybe order food from them and have it chipped in
50:58
because it was that good. Man. Oh well, that's quite the cell,
51:00
all right. So Angelina Bakery, if you're in the vicinity of New
51:05
York or maybe they have other locations and are looking for a bakery, you
51:08
could certainly do worse than Angelina Bakery. Yeah, arguably you couldn't do better
51:14
based on that sales pitch. So the best thing ahead. That's fantastic.
51:17
All right. Well, I think those all that I have. Thank you
51:20
so much for listening, Thank you for joining me, Thank you for recording
51:22
with me today. Shane. Is there anything else that we need to add
51:25
or that you would like to say before we wrap up? I think the
51:28
one thing I have to say is happy eating very good. All right,
51:30
then this is Abraham, Missus Shane. We're out. So yeah, you've
51:35
been listening to Why We Do What We Do. You can learn more about
51:38
this and other episodes by going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for
51:45
listening, and we hope you have an awesome day. So before artificial light,
52:07
artificial light people, this is what commas are important, artificial light people.
52:15
I like the idea of like a fluorescent person who has also been made
52:19
the manufacturer. Yeah, yeah, it's just like it's just a fluorescent robot person