As Americans, our culture dictates that we eat three meals a day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Of course there are those who stray from that, and miss meals or have extra meals; however, that mentality overall is most common in the States. When we learn about other cultures who may have four meals a day, or only two, we begin to wonder why. We judge them based on their meal habits or see them as an "odd" or strange. How we as a society have constructed everything down to meals and food just shows how strictly we build our society, feel the need to follow it, and see any deviations from it as an odd or strange practice. If that culture eats four meals a day because of the economics or supply available in the culture, it has a legitimate structural reason for doing so. In turn, they may see our culture of three meals a day as strange and perhaps not enough. Lastly, that culture of two meals a day could see our culture and the culture of four meals as a waste and unnecessary when it comes to the consumption of products. Again, this whole idea is constructed because of the way our society builds and sees things.
This sort of thing is interesting to dissect on a biological level. Along with how many times a day people eat, we can also look at how much they eat for each given meal, what they eat for each meal, and how long they take to eat.
ReplyDeleteBiologically, it better to eat larger meals in the middle of the day because our metabolism is at its best at that time. Some countries take 2 hours breaks around lunch-time to allow people to go back and eat lunch with their families. Some countries eat small evening meals when the metabolism slows. Other countries only have large meals later in the day because their economy is based around morning to afternoon shifts.
Some countries, like America, focus on eating fast so that they can move quickly to doing other things. Others, like Italy, involve eating more slowly - taking hours to eat three parts of the meal.
It's also interesting to thing about how societies follow different rituals about which foods to eat during a certain time of the day. Why is it abnormal, in America, to eat eggs and
cereal as the evening meal? Tradition, I suppose.
Culture and food is so intensely interesting.