quote: | Originally posted by Lira
It's just because I've never heard that here. Actually, I didn't have eat breakfast (apart from the occasional glass of milk) until my dietician told me I was probably being too Brazilian regarding my eating habits. But first, let's talk about yours...
I'm just guessing here, but I reckon this may be related to the industrial revolution in England where you needed to eat as much as you could before you went to work. It's always a bit of a cultural shock for us here in South America (or in Brazil, at least) when we hear in American sitcoms people saying that "the breakfast is the most important meal of the day" or something of that sort.
Here we think that lunch is the most important meal of the day and it's the meal that gets the most attention. After all, that's when we indulge our gluttony. I go back to my parents' house every Sunday so I can have lunch with them - and if I fail to show up, drama ensues. Though I hate this sort of parallel, there's a reason why breakfast here is just called "Morning Coffee" - you drink some coffee and away you go, you're well rested anyway. And there's this odd belief that if you eat at night, you get fat
(By the way, in case you're wondering, I'm a dinner person... oh, Lira, ever the nonconformist ) |
Eating a substantial breakfast has certain metabolic benefits that can also affect your sleeping schedule. Eating a regular meal shortly after you wake up aligns your dream-wake ration to a more healthy (read: "normal") level - for most people - as it provides a psychomotor incentive to waking up at the same time each day. Just the same, going to bed at the same time each night is also conducive to good health in the long term, so eating just before bed is generally considered detrimental because not only does your metabolism slow down substantially while you sleep (making a lot of people fat... midnight snackers, you know who you are), but the active digestive process can often interfere with the psychological dream process which often regulates a great deal of internal systems, most often affecting energy levels; Basically, sleeping on a full stomach gives you fucky dreams and makes you tired the next day.
But morning coffee and a piece of fruit sounds like a fine breakfast, and one I have quite often. I'll usually throw in a muffin or some yogurt at some point in the morning, just to tide me over until lunch (another awesome meal), but if we're talking habitual paradigms, I'd say the big, huge dinner of meat and potatoes at the end of the day is the most troublesome American meme when it comes to even "healthy" considerations of diet. I know a lot of people like this, and it doesn't do them any favours. But then again, it's just food, nobody lives forever, etc.
In conclusion, it's science, I ain't gotta explain shit.
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