Why not cornflakes for dinner?

     Have you ever wondered why people eat different kinds of meals at different times of the day? And here I?m not simply asking why we eat different portions, but rather why the kind of food is different from the morning to the rest of the day.

    For instance, the people who eat cereal on a regular basis eat it, I?m sure, almost exclusively in the morning. But I don?t see anything about cereal that lends itself to the morning as opposed to the afternoon or evening. Has anyone ever thought of serving cereal with milk as a side dish during the main meal in the evening? And if not, why not?

    What made me think of this was a Seinfeld episode I saw a number of years ago. In the episode, Jerry Seinfeld dates a woman who talks and acts exactly like him. In fact, she acts so much like him that it drives him crazy. Although himself a fan of cereal, he decides the relationship cannot work after his date orders a bowl of cornflakes for dinner.

    I?m sure a lot of people will say that people eat less in the morning, and this is why dishes like cereal, oatmeal, waffles and pop-tarts are commonly eaten at that time instead of later in the day. But this is also a puzzle. If our hunger were simply a function of how long we have gone without eating, you would expect us to be the hungriest in the morning, not the evening. When we wake up to have breakfast, we haven?t eaten anything in nearly 12 hours. You?d think that breakfast would be the biggest meal of the day, and yet I don?t know anyone who eats more for breakfast than for supper.

    Leaving aside for the moment the question of why we eat different sizes of meals, the riddle of why we eat different kinds of food remains. If, for some reason, it?s difficult to eat a big meal in the morning, why not simply make smaller versions of the things you would eat at lunch or supper? If you like club sandwiches, why not make half a sandwich for breakfast if that?s all you have time to eat?

    One reason that the kinds of foods we eat differ depending on the time of day is that we allot different lengths of time to prepare them. In the evening, we may have more time to cook than we do in the morning when we?re scrambling to get ready for work or school. It could be that people are equally as hungry in the morning and the evening, but the desire to get more sleep is so strong that people leave themselves with just a few minutes to prepare their breakfast. Instead of compensating by going to bed earlier, we habitually underestimate how difficult it is to wake up when we?re sleepy. 

    That theory works to explain why we prefer foods in the morning that require little or no preparation time such as bananas or yogurt. It doesn?t explain why foods with longer cooking times like pancakes, French toast and bacon are especially popular for breakfast. I suspect there must be a nutritional explanation. I have a sister who studies dietetics, so I?ll have to ask her when she visits me this weekend.