The other day, as I was gazing out the window on the way to town, the question hit me. Who determined that we should eat three meals a day? Who came up with breakfast, lunch and dinner? Was this a ‘thing’ that just happened and became a fad? Was there any real reason for three meals a day? I turned to my driver husband and asked him the same questions that had been swirling through my brain. He was of no help and had no answers except “I don’t know.”

So, after a cursory Google search, this is what I found.

As it turns out, eating three meals a day stemmed from European settlers, with whom it grew into the normal routine, eventually becoming the eating pattern of the New World. Native Americans were actually eating whenever they felt the urge to, rather than whenever the clock said morning, noon, or night. After the industrial revolution, people began to turn a midday meal into a lunchtime staple, and the after-work meal turned into dinner, a placeholder for the next meal.

“The eating schedule of the native tribes was less rigid… the Europeans took this as ‘evidence that natives were uncivilized,’” Abigail Carroll, author of the book Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal, told National Review. “Civilized people ate properly and boundaried their eating, thus differentiating themselves from the animal kingdom, where grazing is the norm.”

Breakfast, for example, is paraded around as the key to weight loss, but in truth, meal times were based on convenience and ritual. A person’s own eating behavior is one of the greatest determinants of health, and Cornell University researchers say it’s better to avoid going without food for more than three to four hours.

So there you have it. At least one point of view on this question.

Quote taken from: http://www.medicaldaily.com/how-3-meals-day-became-rule-and-why-we-should-be-eating-whenever-we-get-hungry-324892