By Denise Winterman BBC News Magazine
British people - and many others across the world - have been brought up on the
idea of three square meals a day as a normal eating pattern, but it wasn't
always that way.
People are repeatedly told the hallowed family dinner around a table is in
decline and the UK is not the only country experiencing such change.
The case for breakfast, missed by many with deleterious effects, is that it
makes us more alert, helps keep us trim and improves children's work and
behaviour at school.
But when people worry that breaking with the traditional three meals a day is
harmful, are they right about the traditional part? Have people always eaten in
that pattern?
Breakfast
Fry-up breakfast
Breakfast as we know it didn't exist for large parts of history. The Romans
didn't really eat it, usually consuming only one meal a day around noon, says
food historian Caroline Yeldham. In fact, breakfast was actively frowned upon.
"The Romans believed it was healthier to eat only one meal a day," she says.
"They were obsessed with digestion and eating more than one meal was considered
a form of gluttony. This thinking impacted on the way people ate for a very
long time."
Continue reading the main story
A brief history of brunch
Eggs Benedict
Brunch is a portmanteau of "breakfast" and "lunch(eon)"
It is thought the meal has its roots in British 19th Century hunt breakfasts -
lavish multi-course meals
In 1895, Guy Beringer wrote a column for Hunter's Weekly arguing the case for
inventing a whole new meal for late Sunday mornings, mainly for Saturday night
partygoers
The following year he was mentioned in an issue of Punch, which announced "to
be fashionable nowadays we must 'brunch'"
While the concept is British, it's the Americans who really embraced it
It reportedly became popular in 1930s Chicago when film stars and the like
stopped off in the city between trains for a late morning meal
Sunday brunch became even more popular in the US after World War II, when there
was a decline in American churchgoers
This trend continued as the more formal 1950s gave way to the '60s
Back then brunch menus included clam cocktails and calf's liver with hash
browns, nowadays it's more likely to be Eggs Benedict
Source: The Smithsonian
How to cook Eggs Benedict
Try the stress-free full English breakfast
In the Middle Ages monastic life largely shaped when people ate, says food
historian Ivan Day. Nothing could be eaten before morning Mass and meat could
only be eaten for half the days of the year. It's thought the word breakfast
entered the English language during this time and literally meant "break the
night's fast".
Religious ritual also gave us the full English breakfast. On Collop Monday, the
day before Shrove Tuesday, people had to use up meat before the start of Lent.
Much of that meat was pork and bacon as pigs were kept by many people. The meat
was often eaten with eggs, which also had to be used up, and the precursor of
the full English breakfast was born.
But at the time it probably wasn't eaten in the morning.
In about the 17th Century it is believed that all social classes started eating
breakfast, according to chef Clarissa Dickson Wright. After the restoration of
Charles II, coffee, tea and dishes like scrambled eggs started to appear on the
tables of the wealthy. By the late 1740s, breakfast rooms also started
appearing in the homes of the rich.
This morning meal reached new levels of decadence in aristocratic circles in
the 19th Century, with the fashion for hunting parties that lasted days, even
weeks. Up to 24 dishes would be served for breakfast.
The Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th Century regularised working hours,
with labourers needing an early meal to sustain them at work. All classes
started to eat a meal before going to work, even the bosses.
At the turn of the 20th Century, breakfast was revolutionised once again by
American John Harvey Kellogg. He accidentally left some boiled maize out and it
went stale. He passed it through some rollers and baked it, creating the
world's first cornflake. He sparked a multi-billion pound industry.
By the 1920s and 1930s the government was promoting breakfast as the most
important meal of the day, but then World War II made the usual breakfast fare
hard to get. But as Britain emerged from the post-war years into the
economically liberated 1950s, things like American toasters, sliced bread,
instant coffee and pre-sugared cereals invaded the home. Breakfast as we now
know it.
Lunch
Lunch menu board
The terminology around eating in the UK is still confusing. For some "lunch" is
"dinner" and vice versa. From the Roman times to the Middle Ages everyone ate
in the middle of the day, but it was called dinner and was the main meal of the
day. Lunch as we know it didn't exist - not even the word.
During the Middle Ages daylight shaped mealtimes, says Day. With no
electricity, people got up earlier to make use of daylight. Workers had often
toiled in the fields from daybreak, so by midday they were hungry.
"The whole day was structured differently than it is today," says Day. "People
got up much earlier and went to bed much earlier."
By midday workers had often worked for up to six hours. They would take a quick
break and eat what was known as a "beever" or "noonshine", usually bread and
cheese. As artificial light developed, dinner started to shift later in the day
for the wealthier, as a result a light meal during the day was needed.
The origins of the word "lunch" are mysterious and complicated, says Day.
"Lunch was a very rare word up until the 19th Century," he says.
Continue reading the main story
For the love of sandwiches
Man eating a sandwich
Britons buy about three billion ready-made sandwiches a year
We are each thought to eat to about 200 sandwiches a year
A sandwich is the lunch option for 75% of us, says market research analyst
Mintel
The retail sandwich market is worth 6bn
Britain's favourite sandwich is chicken salad
Source: British Sandwich Association
Discover classic British sandwich recipes
Traditional British recipes
One theory is that it's derived from the word "nuncheon", an old Anglo-Saxon
word which meant a quick snack between meals that you can hold in your hands.
It was used around the late 17th Century, says Yeldham. Others theorise that it
comes from the word "nuch" which was used around in the 16th and 17th Century
and means a big piece of bread.
But it's the French custom of "souper" in the 17th Century that helped shaped
what most of us eat for lunch today. It became fashionable among the British
aristocracy to copy the French and eat a light meal in the evening. It was a
more private meal while they gamed and womanised, says Day.
It's the Earl of Sandwich's famous late-night snack from the 1750s that has
come to dominate the modern lunchtime menu. One evening he ordered his valet to
bring him cold meats between some bread. He could eat the snack with just one
hand and wouldn't get grease on anything.
Whether he was wrapped up in an all-night card game or working at his desk is
not clear, both have been suggested. But whatever he was doing, the sandwich
was born.
At the time lunch, however, was still known "as an accidental happening between
meals", says food historian Monica Askay.
Again, it was the Industrial Revolution that helped shape lunch as we know it
today. Middle and lower class eating patterns were defined by working hours.
Many were working long hours in factories and to sustain them a noon-time meal
was essential.
Pies were sold on stalls outside factories. People also started to rely on
mass-produced food as there was no room in towns and cities for gardens to keep
a pig pen or grow their own food. Many didn't even have a kitchen.
"Britain was the first country in the world to feed people with industrialised
food," says Day.
The ritual of taking lunch became ingrained in the daily routine. In the 19th
Century chop houses opened in cities and office workers were given one hour for
lunch. But as war broke out in 1939 and rationing took hold, the lunch was
forced to evolve. Work-based canteens became the most economical way to feed
the masses. It was this model that was adopted by schools after the war.
The 1950s brought a post-War world of cafes and luncheon vouchers. The
Chorleywood Process, a new way of producing bread, also meant the basic loaf
could be produced more cheaply and quickly than ever. The takeaway sandwich
quickly began to fill the niche as a fast, cheap lunch choice.
Today the average time taken to eat lunch - usually in front of the computer -
is roughly 15 minutes, according to researchers at the University of
Westminster. The original meaning of lunch or "nuncheon" as a small, quick
snack between proper meals is just as apt now as it ever was.
Dinner
Family dinner 1938
Dinner was the one meal the Romans did eat, even if it was at a different time
of day.
In the UK the heyday of dinner was in the Middle Ages. It was known as "cena",
Latin for dinner. The aristocracy ate formal, outrageously lavish dinners
around noon. Despite their reputation for being unruly affairs, they were
actually very sophisticated, with strict table manners.
Continue reading the main story
Food for Richard II's 1387 dinner
Ingredients included 14 salted oxen
84lb salted venison
12 boar, including heads
120 sheep heads
400 rabbits
50 swans
150 castrated roosters
1,200 pigeons
210 geese
11,000 eggs
12 gallons of cream
Source: Recipewise
Discover more about Richard II
Try out Fanny Cradock's recipes
They were an ostentatious display of wealth and power, with cooks working in
the kitchen from dawn to get things ready, says Yeldham. With no electricity
cooking dinner in the evening was not an option. Peasants ate dinner around
midday too, although it was a much more modest affair.
As artificial lighting spread, dinner started to be eaten later and later in
the day. It was in the 17th Century that the working lunch started, where men
with aspirations would network.
The middle and lower classes eating patterns were also defined by their working
hours. By the late 18th Century most people were eating three meals a day in
towns and cities, says Day.
By the early 19th Century dinner for most people had been pushed into the
evenings, after work when they returned home for a full meal. Many people,
however, retained the traditional "dinner hour" on a Sunday.
The hallowed family dinner we are so familiar with became accessible to all in
the glorious consumer spending spree of the 1950s. New white goods arrived from
America and the dream of the wife at home baking became a reality. Then the TV
arrived.
TV cook Fanny Cradock brought the 1970s Cordon Bleu dinner to life. Many
middle-class women were bored at home and found self-expression by competing
with each other over who could hold the best dinner party.
The death knell for the family dinner supposedly sounded in 1986, when the
first microwave meal came on to the market. But while a formal family dinner
may be eaten by fewer people nowadays, the dinner party certainly isn't over -
fuelled by the phenomenal sales of recipe books by celebrity chefs.