The pattern we follow today of breakfast, lunch and dinner is so ingrained in our daily routine that we tend to assume it as a human physiological need. However, neither evolutionary biology nor clinical nutrition dictates a universal rule about how many times you should eat per day, since the idea that “three meals a day” is a norm dictated by nature clashes with reality, since History shows us how it has been a habit that has been shaped over the years.
A history class. For centuries, in places like England and the United Statess, a large part of the population only ate two main meals a day, but the three-course scheme became established when salaried work, factories and school schedules made a regular distribution of the day more useful.
And although we tend to think that we always ate this way, eating patterns are reordered with the new urban and work schedules driven by the Industrial Revolution.
A turning point. The consolidation of breakfast, lunch and dinner went hand in hand with the industrialization and urbanization of society, although it did not occur identically or simultaneously in all countries. In fact, in the European fieldthe main meal used to be strongly linked to midday, so the evening “dinner”, understood as the big family meal, is much later than common sense suggests.
Therefore, when it comes to being rigorous, it is not appropriate to affirm without nuances that the Industrial Revolution “invented” the three meals from one day to the next, because history shows us that the evolution was more gradual and strongly depended on the country and social class.
a study published in the magazine Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism point that European dietary patterns changed due to these economic and social transformations. But what is clear is that the modern pattern was consolidated with industrialization, urbanization and the arrival of more rigid work schedules that structured people’s lives.
What does physiology say? Beyond the historical evolution that we have had as a society, medical science indicates that there is no strong base to say that a fixed number of meals is a universal biological law. Delving deeper into the evidence we have, a review published in the journal Nutrients in 2022 determined that what we know about meal frequency is limited and heterogeneous, concluding that there is no universal rule valid for everyone.
What we have seen with different trials is that reducing the frequency of meals, even without applying caloric restriction, can alter some metabolic markers, but this does not at all demonstrate a universal superiority of a specific number of times to eat. Likewise, the well-known population study EPIC-Norfolk found a link between how often we eat and serum cholesterol levels, a reminder that “eating more” does not automatically equate to “better health.”
How we distribute the food. A meta-analysis published in JAMA indicates that the timing and distribution of meals can influence weight and metabolism, but that is not the same as defending a specific frequency as the norm for everyone.
What nutritional chronobiology does warn us about is that the internal clock plays a crucial role and consuming food in the morning is associated with a better metabolic profile in some studies, while eating at night or irregularly is related to worse results. This is why maintaining irregular eating habits during adolescence can even be associated with poorer long-term cardiometabolic health in adulthood.
Images | Louis Hansel
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