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matt1 matt1
 

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M$3.25  Funded By Mahalo ? |  October 23, 2009 02:20 AM

When did humans get into the habit of eating 3 meals a day?

Most people aim to eat 3 meals every day. When did the tradition start?
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lyndsae lyndsae
 
 October 23, 2009 03:41 AM
For thousands of years, humans all over the world subsisted on 1 meal a day. When most of the world was arranged in hunter-gatherer societies, the main meal would be eaten in the evening, after the wild game or plants had been collected.

As humans moved toward agriculture-based communities, people more frequently ate twice a day, usually in the morning and early evening. Ancient Greeks typically ate first meal of the day at around noon and then had dinner in the evening. Ancient Roman soldiers ate a small breakfast early in the morning and had their second meal after sunset.

It seems that the practice of eating three meals a day became popular with the industrial revolution, when workers gained a midday meal break as part of their standardized work day. This is when people started eating breakfast, lunch/dinner, and supper.

Today, many health and fitness experts advise eating 5-6 small meals per day.
Source(s):
http://chestofbooks.com/health/natural-cure/The-Hygienic-System-Orthotrophy...

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phlogiston phlogiston
 
October 23, 2009 02:17 PM
Unfortunately this orthotrophy book does not seem to have adequate sources for their claims. I would not trust this source as it looks more like pseudoscience to me. Eating practices have varies widely throughout history and even if a single group did have a certain practice, to make claims of uniform practice for whole civilizations such as the Greeks or Romans is to make a hasty generalization. And making claims about ancient hunter-gatherer societies is purely speculative.

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petermusan... petermusan...
 
October 23, 2009 03:26 AM
Humans regardless of where they are in the world tend to separate meals into a classic breakfast,lunch,dinner structure.Everyone from Modern Americans to tribal peoples in the mountains of South America,still surviving using stone age technology, all eat based on this structure. The normal person wakes early and eats to fuel before working, takes a break in the middle of the day and has their biggest meal later in the day or at night. I would assume dinner is the biggest meal because light was provided only by the fire in the house for a very long time so you were unable to work outside.

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cypheron cypheron
 
October 23, 2009 05:50 PM
The idea of breakfast and supper have been around for a very long time. Pulling from biblical sources, you can find Jesus speaking of both (John 21:12 and Luke 14:12). So far as I know, lunch as we know it doesn't come into the picture until the late middle ages (see 'lunchentach'). Of course mid-day meals are pretty old too (Genesis 43:16), but it would appear these were early suppers.

I think the dietary pattern of three meals a day is a product of regimentation. People got on fine with one or two meals a day for thousands of years and then they got jobs with workdays (which split a day into three parts) and the next thing you know they were talking about lunchentach. The spread of the middle meal isn't well documented, but it probably follows the spread of the modern workday which by the 19th Century was standard for urban Europeans. It's in the early 19th Century that 'lunch' emerged as a word.
Source(s):
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=lunch


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yaz20100 yaz20100
 
October 23, 2009 11:32 PM
cave men were living an ad lib life.. if they get hungry.. they simply look for food. so probably eating specific meals started early in humanity when food became available (farming and animal raising). probably with early civilizations in Mesopotamia.

as for me... i'm still can't get that habit... i go to work late and spend it on snacks and coffee.. so i eat one meal which we call it dinner :P

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