I was born and raised in Italy, where one key aspect of the day was always merenda. It translates loosely to “snack,” but it is really a very specific kind of snack, eaten at a specific time—usually sometime between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., to bridge the gap between lunch and dinner. My favorite was always a Kinder Cioccolato with an Estathé, which I would calmly eat while watching TV after ballet class, while my mom was preparing dinner.
Dinner was at 7 p.m., because in Italy dinner is at 7 p.m. even if you are a child. That was the whole point of merenda. It existed because the meals around it were fixed.
When I moved to the United States in 2005, I immediately thought it was odd that the concept of an in-between-meals meal, a snack, didn’t really seem to have a time. There was no merenda here because it was always merenda time. You could snack at 10:30 in the morning, at 2 p.m., at 5 p.m., after dinner, in the car, at your desk, while watching TV, while trying to diet and, perhaps especially, while not trying to diet.
In America, a snack didn’t necessarily sit between meals. At the time, I registered this as one of those small cultural differences that seem funny when you move countries. Now I think it was telling me something bigger.
A new survey of 1,000 full-time American college students ages 18 to 25 found that just 24 percent regularly eat three balanced meals a day while school is in session. More than half say they occasionally or frequently replace meals with snacks; another quarter say they eat whenever they have time or follow a completely unpredictable eating schedule. Among students who have completed at least one year of college, 96 percent say they have replaced a meal with snacks during a typical school week.
College students clearly snack a lot but could it be that the very concept of a meal is now losing its place in the day? Lunch is disappearing not because Americans have suddenly lost interest in meals, but because meals require something modern life increasingly refuses to protect: uninterrupted time. College students may simply be the leading edge of an America in which food has to bend around work, school and productivity instead of forcing those things, however briefly, to stop.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
