Culture and Food

In response to Carrisa - full post here

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.

Biologically, 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.