Who Decided We Should Eat Three Meals a Day?

KAKALI DAS

Most of us eat three meals every day. We have breakfast in the morning, lunch in the afternoon, and dinner in the evening. Many people also eat snacks between meals. It feels so natural that we rarely stop to ask why we eat this way. We often believe that our bodies are simply following a natural rhythm. Hunger comes, we eat, and the day continues.

But the truth is very different.

The three meal routine that most people follow today is not something that has always existed. It is not a universal rule of human nature. Instead, it is the result of thousands of years of social change, religious beliefs, work schedules, business interests, and clever marketing. Many of the habits we think are natural were actually created by people who were solving problems that had very little to do with our hunger.

To understand why we eat the way we do today, we have to travel back through history.

In ancient Rome, eating was not simply about satisfying hunger. It was closely connected to ideas of discipline, self control, and good health. The Romans believed that the human body worked best when it had only one main meal each day. They were deeply concerned about digestion and believed that eating too often placed unnecessary stress on the body.

Food historian Caroline Yeldham explains that Romans believed eating more than one meal each day was unhealthy and showed a lack of self control. A person who constantly ate was considered greedy and unable to control personal desires. Eating frequently was not just seen as unhealthy. It was viewed as a weakness of character.

As a result, one large meal became the standard for much of Roman society. The idea that eating several times each day was a sign of gluttony remained influential for centuries after the Roman Empire disappeared.

This way of thinking continued into medieval Europe, where religion became another powerful influence on eating habits.

During the Middle Ages, many Christians believed that people should attend morning church services before eating anything. Having food before morning worship suggested that satisfying physical desires was more important than serving God. For this reason, eating early in the morning became associated with weak self control.

Some religious communities even considered early morning eating a form of gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins. Fasting until midday became a symbol of discipline and faith.

This history explains why the first meal of the day is called breakfast. The word literally means breaking the overnight fast. It does not describe the beginning of the day. It describes the end of a period without food.

Above [is a different, conceptual illustration framed around the concept of time and history. Prepared by Powershift]

Interestingly, even kings and queens often skipped breakfast. Historical records show that many European monarchs, despite having access to unlimited food, usually waited until later in the day to eat.

Breakfast was generally reserved for people who truly needed it. Young children were allowed to eat because they were still growing. Farmers and labourers working in the fields needed energy early in the morning. Elderly people and those who were sick also received breakfast because their bodies were considered too weak to wait.

For healthy adults, eating breakfast sometimes carried the suggestion that they lacked discipline or physical strength.

The most important meal of the day during this period was not dinner as we know it today. It was served around late morning or midday and was known as dinner.

In the courts of English kings such as Henry the Seventh, dinner referred to the largest meal of the day, not the evening meal. Everything else revolved around this central meal.

Some traces of this older tradition still survive today. In many families, especially on Sundays, the biggest family meal is still served around noon rather than in the evening.

Until about the beginning of the nineteenth century, many people in England followed a simple pattern of two meals each day. They had dinner around the middle of the day and supper later in the evening.

This schedule was practical because it followed daylight.

Before electricity, people depended entirely on sunlight. Preparing meals after dark meant working with open flames inside wooden houses, creating serious fire risks. Cooking was easier and safer during daylight hours.

During winter, when darkness arrived early, families often ate their main meal as early as three in the afternoon. Their daily routine was shaped by the rising and setting of the sun rather than by clocks.

It is also important to remember that there was never one universal way of eating.

In China, two meals each day remained common for many centuries. Three meals only became widespread during the Song Dynasty around one thousand years ago.

In Spain, people often eat five times each day, including smaller meals between the main ones.

In Poland, many people still enjoy what is called a second breakfast during the morning.

Many Indigenous communities in North America traditionally did not divide the day into fixed meals at all. People simply ate when food was available or when they became hungry.

This shows that meal schedules are cultural habits rather than biological rules.

The biggest change came during the Industrial Revolution.

Factories completely transformed the way people worked and lived. Before industrialisation, most people worked close to home. Farmers worked on nearby land, while craftsmen often had workshops attached to their houses. At midday, workers simply returned home to enjoy the main family meal.

Factory workers could no longer do this.

Factories were often located far from home, and workers followed strict schedules. Long shifts made it impossible to return home for a large midday meal.

As a result, the traditional dinner gradually moved from the middle of the day to the evening after work.

The empty space left in the middle of the day needed a replacement. This smaller meal became lunch.

Unlike traditional dinner, lunch had to be quick and practical. Workers often carried simple cold food packed in containers because there were no kitchens inside factories.

[The Pyramid of Human Appetite: How History Built Our Daily Menu; Image by POWERSHIFT]

This illustration reimagines the article’s message as an architectural feast, where centuries of cultural, industrial, and economic shifts stacked up to create today’s eating habits:

Breakfast also changed.

When people expected to work long hours before returning home for dinner, they could no longer begin the day without eating. Breakfast became necessary because workers needed enough energy to survive demanding factory shifts.

New technologies helped this change. Coal stoves made it much faster to prepare hot meals in the morning than older wood fired stoves.

Among wealthy Victorian families, breakfast became an elaborate event with large dining rooms, multiple dishes, and careful rituals. Over time, simpler versions of these breakfasts spread to ordinary households.

Factories changed something even more important than meal times.

For many families, evening became the only time when everyone was together under one roof. Dinner gradually became more than just food. It became the daily family gathering, a moment for conversation, relationships, and shared experiences.

Even today, many families consider dinner the most important social meal because this tradition was created during the industrial age.

However, another powerful force soon began influencing what people actually ate.

In the early twentieth century, the American company Beechnut Packing Company faced a business problem. It sold bacon, but bacon sales were disappointing.

To solve this problem, the company hired Edward Bernays, one of the founders of modern public relations. Bernays was also the nephew of famous psychologist Sigmund Freud.

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Rather than simply advertising bacon, Bernays decided to change public opinion.

He first consulted a doctor, asking whether a heavier breakfast might be healthier than a light one. The doctor agreed that it probably made sense because people lost energy overnight.

Bernays then asked this doctor to write to five thousand other physicians asking whether they agreed.

More than four thousand five hundred doctors supported the general idea that a larger breakfast could be beneficial.

Although there had been no scientific study involving actual patients, newspapers enthusiastically published headlines claiming that thousands of doctors recommended heavy breakfasts for better health.

Many newspaper articles also suggested the ideal breakfast should include bacon and eggs.

Within only a few months, Beechnut’s bacon sales increased dramatically.

Today, bacon and eggs are widely considered a traditional American breakfast, even though this tradition is only about one hundred years old and was largely created by a public relations campaign.

Around the same time, another famous idea entered popular culture.People began hearing that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.This statement sounds like established medical advice, but its history tells a different story.

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One of its earliest appearances was in a magazine connected to the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, which was operated by Doctor John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of cornflakes.

Breakfast cereals were becoming an important business, and encouraging people to eat breakfast every morning helped increase cereal sales.

Advertising repeated the slogan for decades through newspapers, magazines, and radio broadcasts. Eventually, people accepted it as unquestionable truth.

Today, millions still repeat this phrase without knowing that it was heavily promoted by companies selling breakfast foods.

The story does not end with three meals.

For much of the nineteenth century, eating between meals was generally considered bad manners. Snacks were associated with poor street vendors selling peanuts and other inexpensive foods.

Respectable people were expected to wait patiently until the next proper meal.

Historian Abigail Carroll explains that as meals became more organised and formal, eating outside scheduled meal times appeared rude and undisciplined.

Food companies saw an opportunity.

During the twentieth century, manufacturers slowly changed public attitudes. Advertising presented snacks as enjoyable, convenient, and perfectly normal.

During the nineteen sixties and seventies, hundreds of new snack products appeared every year. By the late nineteen eighties, nearly two thousand new snack products were introduced annually in the United States.

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Each new product encouraged people to eat outside traditional meal times.

Unlike breakfast, lunch, or dinner, snacking was driven almost entirely by commercial interests. Companies realised that someone who eats six times each day buys far more food than someone who eats only three times.

The modern habit of constant snacking became another profitable business model.

Looking back across history, a clear pattern emerges.Ancient Romans promoted one meal because they believed it encouraged discipline and good health.

Medieval religious leaders discouraged breakfast because they wanted people to control physical desires and place spiritual duties first.

The Industrial Revolution reorganised meals around factory schedules instead of daylight.

Businesses later influenced what people ate through advertising, creating traditions that often felt ancient but were actually quite recent.

Finally, the snack industry convinced people that eating between meals was normal, creating even more opportunities for food sales.

None of these changes happened because the human body suddenly changed. They happened because society changed.

Churches wanted discipline. Factories wanted efficient workers. Food companies wanted larger profits. Advertising agencies wanted to sell products. Each institution solved its own problem, and in doing so, reshaped our daily eating habits.

This does not mean that eating three meals each day is wrong. For many people, it is a healthy and practical routine. Others may feel better eating two meals, several smaller meals, or following different cultural traditions. Human bodies are remarkably adaptable.

The important lesson is that there is no single natural timetable for eating. The clock that tells us when breakfast, lunch, or dinner should happen is largely a product of history rather than biology.

The next time you feel guilty for skipping breakfast, eating dinner late, or feeling hungry outside normal meal times, it is worth remembering that these rules were not handed down by nature. They were shaped over centuries by religion, work, technology, advertising, and commerce.

Your hunger is real. But the schedule that tells you exactly when you should satisfy it is one that history quietly placed on your table long before you were born.

References:

1. Carroll, Abigail. Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal. Basic Books, 2013. The definitive history of how breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacking evolved in modern society.
2. Flandrin, Jean Louis, &Montanari, Massimo (Eds.). Food: A Culinary History. Columbia University Press, 1999.
3. Montanari, Massimo. Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table. Columbia University Press, 2012.
4. Albala, Ken. Eating Right in the Renaissance. University of California Press, 2002.
5. Bernays, Edward L. Propaganda. Horace Liveright, 1928. A classic work explaining the methods of modern public relations, including the shaping of consumer behaviour.
6. Freedman, Paul (Ed.). Food: The History of Taste. University of California Press, 2007.

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