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Originally Posted by orca
Is breakfast really the most important meal of the day? I've read a few articles on the Japanese diet that say it is and i'm not sure why cos I feel really stuffy and lazy in the morning if I eat heavy so would love more info on that, why is it considered important and what benefits does it have on someones body?
I'm not much of a breakfast person and don't even eat breakfast most days which is unhealthy I know cos it has me snacking more later so i'm tryin to change that.
Also I get why the evening meal would be light, but why lunch too?
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I've wondered this sometimes too. There seems to be a lot of conflicting advice going around; eat a light breakfast, eat a heavy lunch, don't eat a light lunch etc etc. From what I can discern, eating any amount at breakfast time is better than eating nothing at all, and the idea of a heavy breakfast or otherwise stodgy repast comes from how people lived way back when.
For example, the traditional 'English Breakfast' is a monster- Bacon, sausage, egg, bread, beans, mushrooms and more besides, but very few people eat this on a regular basis. It's all fat, protein and heavy carbs and it doesn't seem to make much sense as a breakfast option in modern day. However, going back a couple of hundred years, it's a different story. People got up earlier, they had much more physical jobs and, particularly in the case of the laboring classes, would often get up, work a few hours and then have breakfast. So by the time they ate, they'd have already burnt off energy and salts in their sweat and really need something substantial to make up for that. In fact, your body craves animal fats if you live that kind of lifestyle. Our neanderthal ancestors, for example, lived very physical lives and so were predominately carnivores. But I digress.
Having had a stout breakfast, they were then able to keep working hard for as long as it was light enough to do so, and lunch was pretty meagre- bread and dripping maybe, and tea. More "unhealthy" salt, carbs and animal fat. Dinner was probably more varied; a small meal if you were poor, something bigger if you were better off. But it wouldn't be unheard of for that big breakfast to be the main, or only meal, of a person's day.
Another reason was probably climate. Germany and the UK share a reputation for stodgy stick-to-your-ribs type cooking. Lots of carbs again, like potatoes. Basically, when the weather is cold, your body works harder to keep itself up to temperature and that takes energy. Heavy food takes longer to digest, and carby/meaty food more so than things like fruit or vegetables, so you can keep yourself warmer longer. It's like having a more efficient battery. Probably why they stacked all this in first thing in the morning, is that they'd already gone a long period asleep where they obviously weren't topping their reserves up by eating.
The reason why it no longer makes any sense, is that in a modern world, most of us don't work that physically any more.
Anyway, that's my take on the matter. I can't really advise you on what you should be eating or when to eat it, but I hope that this goes a little way to explain why people think (maybe misguidedly) that breakfast needs to be a feast.