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Post by Deleted on May 9, 2009 6:02:30 GMT
Some people were brought up on a traditional family meal cycle and have kept it that way. Others have always eaten at odd hours. Some people completely changed their eating habits when they reached adulthood, moved to another country or got married.
What is your routine?
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Post by BigIain on May 9, 2009 10:47:27 GMT
I am quite set during the week but very flexible at the weekend.
Some weekends I will have a massive brunches. others I will have a huge meal with friends at 3 or 4 in the afternoon
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Post by Jazz on May 9, 2009 13:59:09 GMT
My habits have completely changed since moving away from home. When I was growing up we ate at very specific times, breakfast before school, lunch at noon and dinner at 5 or 6PM.
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Post by auntieannie on May 9, 2009 15:23:57 GMT
We have 3 set meals a day, I need them... as well as all the "healthy" snacks I eat during the day. Although I snack less at weekends.
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Post by Don Cuevas on May 9, 2009 21:28:13 GMT
Desayuno: a las 5:30 o las 6:30 de la mañana. Almuerzo: a las 9:30-10:00 de la mañana. Comida: a las 1:30- 2:30 de la tarde. Cena ligera: a las 7-8:00 de la noche.
I have gained a great deal of weight in the last year, due to this dietary regimen and a decided failure to exercise. I may change my name to Sancho Panza.
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Post by lagatta on May 9, 2009 22:19:55 GMT
Almuerzo sounds like a second breakfast - I don't know much about Mexican eating patterns but wouldn't that be logical for rural people who do a lot of physical work?
Any pleasant way you can get more exercise?
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Post by bjd on May 10, 2009 8:37:23 GMT
Interesting names, Don Cuevas. I was just in Ecuador where it's the name of lunch. Comida just means food in general.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 10, 2009 15:39:57 GMT
"Desayuno" literally means "break fast". It's usually something light, such a bun with coffee or hot chocolate. Hot chocolate around here is frequently made with water rather than milk. I've come to prefer it that way.
Almuerzo can be huge. In any Mexican market you'll find stand after stand offering it. A basket of sweet and regular bread (usually small French-type) loaves is put on the table when someone comes to take your order. You enjoy your beverage and the bread until your "real" food comes -- this can be poblano chile strips and cubes of queso fresco (mild, unaged cheese) cooked in milk, or eggs scrambled with diced cactus pad, or an enchilada accompanied or not by a big piece of meat or not, among other choices.
A Oaxaca "enchilada" can be a filling meal by itself. A large tortilla is quickly dipped in hot fat just long enough to make it very flexible, then gently set into any one of three sauces. There it's gently folded over, then folded again and transferred to the plate. It's sprinkled with queso fresco, parsley, and fresh onions and brought to the table hot and bulging with sauce. The sauces are bean for an enfrijolada; mildly hot chile-based for enchilada; and any mole for the enmolada.
The mid-day meal is not little: usually soup, then rice or pasta, then a meat, fish, or stew.
Night-time brings out taco stands of all types, little restaurants that only open in the evenings to sell pozole (hominy stew), dessert stands with cake, flan, and gelatins, or people can opt to eat at home. This will generally be a lighter meal, with perhaps a snack very similar to desayuno later in the night, depending on how late the family stays up.
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2009 16:00:28 GMT
While we're on the subject, I have always found it interesting that the French word for breakfast is 'petit dejeuner'. 'Jeuner' is the verb for 'to fast' -- so 'dejeuner' means to 'de-fast'. What I find strange is that it isn't really a fast that causes us not to eat at night but the fact that we are asleep.
Nevertheless, the 'petit dejeuner' is the small defasting event, whereas the noontime meal is the 'dejeuner' -- somehow I feel that evil religions are involved in these terms.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 10, 2009 16:07:26 GMT
Speaking of which, I believe fasting in the medieval church meant exactly that -- no food, as opposed to only avoiding meat. You have to wonder if it weren't expedient to get people not to eat during Lent -- at the very end of winter, when the food stores were running out and the new crops were not yet in.
Ayuno is the word for fast or fasting (verb: ayunar), although en ayunas is more often heard. Jeuner and Ayunar are practically the same word.
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Post by lagatta on May 10, 2009 20:42:48 GMT
Well, they couldn't have lived on no food for a month, but I do believe it was much more stringent than no meat. Indeed it was a very hungry time of year.
Sometimes in Québec, déjeuner still refers to breakfast, keeping an older French form, also found in Belgium and in some French regions, at least in familiar/familial usage.
Interestingly, the usual Italian term for breakfast is collazione or prima collazione (une collation is a snack or light meal in many francophone regions), not a term having to do with fasting. Except in the Alps or areas in the northeast where there is some Austrian influence, it is very light indeed and often skipped altogether or reduced to some not very sweet biscuits dunked in the mandatory coffee (espresso, cappuccino, caffè latte etc).
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Post by hwinpp on May 11, 2009 5:24:05 GMT
I eat when I feel like it, but mostly I skip breakfast and lunch during the week. On Sundays I snack a bit throughout the day.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2010 8:50:07 GMT
I am skipping breakfast more and more. No hunger at all when I get up. I have about half a glass of orange juice and that's it. Perhaps I should eat a lighter dinner.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Sept 28, 2010 11:19:56 GMT
I am skipping breakfast more and more. No hunger at all when I get up. I have about half a glass of orange juice and that's it. Perhaps I should eat a lighter dinner. I would be close to fainting about 3 hours after skipping any meal.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2010 11:33:35 GMT
And I skipped lunch, too -- spent my time at Virgin Megastore looking at books.
I know a couple of people who can't go without eating, and yes they do come close to fainting. I remember having to pull into a service station to buy emergency food with my friend from Singapore, on our way back to Paris from Jersey/Saint Malo. His hands were shaking.
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Post by lagatta on Sept 28, 2010 11:58:16 GMT
I don't come close to fainting, and do forget to eat when I have a rush of intense work, but can get a headache from that (low blood sugar, I imagine).
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2010 12:36:29 GMT
My meal skipping except for breakfast is related to my view that meals should be eaten at set times. If I miss the window of opportunity, I prefer to wait for the next meal time rather than jumping on a snack.
(Yes, of course I am sure there are times when I have broken my own rules.)
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Post by joanne28 on Sept 28, 2010 14:57:00 GMT
People skip meals? I used to skip breakfast all the time but I was younger and more resilient then. During the week, breakfast and lunch are quite regular. Dinner varies quite a bit, based on what we need to be doing after work. Weekends all our meals time shift - breakfast around 9 or 10, lunch at 2 or 3, dinner (or some semblance of a meal) around 8 or 9. When I was skinny, I used to faint when I hadn't eaten for three hours. So I snack a great deal. Right now I have an apple, a banana, a pear and grapes on my desk for today's snacks.
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Post by hwinpp on Sept 29, 2010 4:36:52 GMT
The only 'given' meal for me is dinner during the week at home. I sometimes skip breakfast and nearly always lunch.
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Post by tod2 on Sept 29, 2010 10:18:32 GMT
I am definitely a breakfast person and this becomes a slight problem when on holiday as my husband is a person who does not feel the need to eat before 10-11am. He survives on a cup of tea until lunchtime no problem! I on the otherhand can do the same if I have to but consentrate better when I'm not constantly thinking about the grumbling coming from my stomach!
If I don't get to eat lunch by 2-3pm I would rather skip a meal altogether. Eating dinner too late in the evening also causes me problems so our meal is generally between 6.30-7.30pm. At home after dinner I spend an hour or so checking out Fodors/Port-in-a-storm or playing Texas Hold'em on Poker Stars just so everything settles before getting horizontal.
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Post by betsie on Sept 29, 2010 10:51:38 GMT
I used to skip meals, especially breakfast, until I found out this can cause diabetes.
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Post by lagatta on Sept 29, 2010 11:52:08 GMT
Because it makes blood sugar levels dip so far, or simply because skipping breakfast is supposed to contribute to weight gain? I've never heard that particular medical factoid.
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Post by betsie on Sept 29, 2010 12:40:32 GMT
It's due to the blood sugar levels, Lagatta. Over-eating and under-eating both cause diabetes. I checked the truth of this with my doctor and now see that I always eat breakfast and have at least something at lunch time.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 29, 2010 15:37:15 GMT
Wow ~~ I never knew that! My assumption was that the "three squares" were built around older, rural habits.
I'm definitely like Tod2's husband, not ever feeling hungry in the mornings. Ditto being like LaGatta in that the only noticeable physical reaction I have to hunger is a slight headache. I'm sure I've said this before, but I only consistently ate breakfast when I was working, always either an egg or a cheese sandwich because that would carry me for hours.
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Post by lagatta on Sept 29, 2010 16:07:46 GMT
I do almost always eat a small breakfast, ALWAYS containing protein, such as an egg, some cheese or even some cold chicken (a sandwich, usually). Or kippers if I can get them! If I'm having a coffee and croissant in a café with a friend I'll eat a couple of slices of that chicken/turkey breast or lean ham beforehand. I learnt to do this when studying in Italy, as a sweet breakfast with no protein beforehand gives me a worse headache than no food at all.
The problem with the "three squares" as eaten in some cultures is that is simply too much food for many people working in sedentary jobs. Rural people here needed a lot of calories, in the cold.
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Post by onlymark on Sept 29, 2010 16:24:26 GMT
I eat differently when by myself as opposed to with the family, as everyone does. With the family we stick to set meal times, this usually means just at the weekend, but in the week we have dinner at 6pm or as near to that as we can manage. I get up in the week at 6am and never have breakfast or anything to eat until about 10.30am. Then that will last me until dinner time. I may well then have a small snack late evening, a supper, of cheese and biscuits or cornflakes etc.
Growing up my father nearly always worked shifts and my mother worked so we only ate together for certain at the weekends/holidays. But I was brought up that you had breakfast, dinner, tea and then supper. My father even now will only eat a proper full hot meal at 12.30pm - dinner time. Lunch wasn't something we'd 'do'.
I then spent a lot of my working life also working shifts, so a set meal time was difficult but when I took groups on trips/expeditions I always tried to make sure we had set meal times to get in to a rhythm and people knew what to expect.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2013 16:56:32 GMT
Lunch seems to have disappeared from my schedule but the reason is because "I prefer set meal times." I am usually doing something or other (of great importance) between noon and 2 p.m. and once it is later than that, I find it inappropriate to eat anything since dinner is coming up.
Today I was looking at souvlaki sandwiches, crêpes, ice cream vendors... but I found myself incapable of getting anything to eat even though I was starving, because they all set off the snack alarm in my brain, and I absolutely never eat snacks. (That is a lie obviously, but the truth is that it is extremely rare.)
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Post by lagatta on Aug 16, 2013 11:11:53 GMT
What time of day was it, Kerouac?
You could have a bit of food in the early afternoon if you missed lunch, and it wouldn't spoil a supper taken at the customary Parisian hour. I'd have wanted the souvlaki for the protein - here you can also have it on a stick if you don't want to eat too much bread.
The kebabs they sell in Germany and France are a lot of food for one person who doesn't do hard physical work, and often too fatty.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2013 11:43:19 GMT
It was about 3 p.m. and I knew that I had spare ribs waiting at home to be cooked.
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Post by rikita on Aug 29, 2013 18:44:14 GMT
can't answer - i eat vaguely at traditional times, but they vary a bit. like, we have dinner usually at 7, but it can be as early as 5:30 and as late as 9, depending on various factors.
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