Contrary to popular belief, supper should be largest meal

[roster]

Article: Ori Hofmekler's Opinion http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitnes ... eight.aspx

Hard to believe. I always believed the old adage, "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper."

What do you think?

[Hawthorne]

I don't know. I have always had supper/dinner as the largest meal of the day. It seems to me that you go the longest between supper/dinner and breakfast than between the other meals of the day so it should be the biggest.

Sorry, I didn't read the link. I just responded what I do and why. I'll go and have a look at the link.

[Slinky]

I'd heard that breakfast should be our largest meal, tho not in the words you quoted us. Mostly in relation to the "fact" that Americans are "too fat".

The evening meal has always been the largest meal in our family and as far as I'm concerned it will remain so. Neither of us, nor our kids, or grandkids are "too fat".

[Hawthorne]

There is just my husband and I and neither of us is overweight. He has Type 2 Diabetes.

Always had the evening meal as the largest and will continue.

[Julie]

Rather than compare meal size, wouldn't it make more sense to compare what you eat when? A study just came out that says contrary to popular opinion (or old myth) it's better to have more protein and fat at breakfast than carbs, and maybe cut back on protein at supper. Will we ever get it right? Is there a 'right'?

[Cuda]

I skip breakfast and skip lunch a lot of the time and eat a large dinner and again right before I go to bed which I am always told is the worst thing to do. I lipid panel and blood sugar are perfect and I am at my ideal BMI. I dont plan to change it. I figure at one times humans just ate whenever they could. I don't buy that our bodies were made to eat certain meals at certain times.

If one has the willpower and feels fine doing so I would be you could get away with eating all your calories once a day. My dog did.

[kteague]

Getting it "right" on diet is like shooting at a moving target. I read the linked article, didn't see anything that made me feel particularly enlightened.

In my youth, during the summers we would go "down home" to the family farm in rural Virginia. Hard physical labor was a requirement, so saying the food made you feel lethargic just wasn't gonna work. Breakfast at about 6am was huge - like fried chicken, bisquits & gravy, eggs, bacon, sausage, fried potatoes. Lunch (then called dinner) about 11am was nearly as filling, then back to the fields. No supper was cooked. If you were lucky there'd be a bisquit and a slice of bacon left over, and no one felt deprived in the evening, probably too tired to care. No one was overweight or unhealthy from the heavy eating because they "worked it off".

As for me, while I may not always do "right", I figure I know what is healthy and what is unhealthy, and as far as what works for me, the evidence will speak for itself. Always open to learning something new and insightful, but I won't likely learn those things from just anyone trying to sell something and touting a "new revelation". Yeah, just a bit cynical.

[Julie]

You've just succeeded in making me feel very hungry!

[NightMonkey]

Me too Julie.

So we don't know which meal should be the largest? Just to be on the safe side I am going to eat three large meals every day.

[SleepyT]

....In my youth, during the summers we would go "down home" to the family farm in rural Virginia. Hard physical labor was a requirement, so saying the food made you feel lethargic just wasn't gonna work. Breakfast at about 6am was huge - like fried chicken, bisquits & gravy, eggs, bacon, sausage, fried potatoes. Lunch (then called dinner) about 11am was nearly as filling, then back to the fields. No supper was cooked. If you were lucky there'd be a bisquit and a slice of bacon left over, and no one felt deprived in the evening, probably too tired to care. No one was overweight or unhealthy from the heavy eating because they "worked it off"...

Whereabouts in Virginia? Was it a tobacco farm?

[no_more_headaches]

Americans have only become overweight in the last 30 years or so. The evening meal being the largest has been that way for a long time.

What has changed:
1) Baby boomers the largest segment of the population are now approaching the retirement years.
2) Jobs in general have been become less physical as we have more machines and have offshored a lot of physical labor.
3) Dual income families so kids don't eat at home as much. Everybody is doing something.
4) Lots of video games versus playing ball in the street when I grew up.
4) Fast food - high fructose - low fat marketed foods.

The last one is the biggest culprit. I remember having a public school cafeteria with orchestrated meals. Now everybody walks down the street to Taco Bell and they have Coke in the vending machines.
We used to take lunch to work, now it seems only the asian cultures working in my building have joint lunches and everybody else goes out.

So I don't think Supper is the issue.

[NightMonkey]

4) Fast food -

It is not fast food particularly. Meals at "sit-down" restaurants are higher calorie, higher carb than fast food. This includes almost all sit-down restaurants from Morton's and Palm all the way down to Chili's and Applebee's. It's the serving size!!!

Fast food becomes our easy target while we smugly tromp off to a sit-down restaurant to eat three times as many calories as people are eating at McDonald's.

Eating at home is also part of the problem. Serving sizes in cookbooks have rapidly become larger. People eat large and high-carb at home.

One of the downsides to a wealthy society.