Subject: Re: Three Meals a Day

From: [email-masked] (Dorothy J Heydt)
Date: 11 May 1994 21:03:52 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Mindy Wallis <[email-masked]> wrote:
>What is the origin of eating three meals a day?  Who eats three meals a
>day?  Is it universal or primarily a Western thing?  Do people in other
>cultures or at other times eat more or less?

In the Middle Ages it was generally one or two meals a day.  St.
Benedict's Rule sets out that during the season of shorter days
(mid-fall to Easter) the brothers would eat one meal a day,
and during the longer days (Easter to mid-fall), a main meal
at midday and a lesser meal in the evening.  Note that Lent,
whenever in the spring it fell, was one-meal time by
definition.

Reay Tannahill's _Food in History_ ought to have some
information.  I think it was there that I read that the secular
people kept this schedule too at first, but then added a
"reresoper," a snack in the late evening.  The clergy thought
this was a terrible idea and thundered from the pulpit about it.
But they eventually took up the practice themselves, which is why
"collation," which began by meaning a late-evening session 
to get together and read the Church Fathers, later meant a light
meal.

Dorothy J. Heydt
[email-masked]	
University of California
Berkeley

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From: [email-masked] (Mindy Wallis)
Date: 11 May 1994 19:45:39 GMT

Just wondering.
-- 
Mindy
Institute for the Learning Sciences
Northwestern University
[email-masked]

"Don't try and engage my enthusiasm, I haven't got one."
     -- Marvin, the Paranoid Android.