Why do we need three meals?

The standard answer has been that your body needs nourishment spaced over the day to function properly. People who have studied the problem have always said that it’s important to start with a good breakfast.

There have even been some people who had the idea that kids who didn’t start with a good breakfast didn’t do as well in school as they would otherwise. However, there’s some dispute about that, even though I personally think it’s important to start with some fuel at the beginning of the day.

There’s another part of your question. Why eat only three meals a day? There have been lots of humans who didn’t eat three meals a day on a regular schedule. If you think about animals in the wild, they tend to eat when food is available and not on any schedule. And some farm animals, especially pigs, are given the choice of eating whenever they feel like it.

Eating three meals a day has become a custom. I noticed that people in the office where I work all go to lunch at noon. That is their custom, and they eat then, whether or not they are hungry. In Europe, most people tend to take their larger meal at noon and only a light supper at night. So how we divide up our meals depends a lot on custom.