A EUREST WHITE PAPER FEBRUARY 2013

CRUNCH TIME FOR THE EVENING MEAL

FROM FORMAL DINNER TO GRAB-AND-GO, OUR EATING HABITS ARE A MOVEABLE FEAST.

COMPASS GROUP UK & IRELAND LIMITED PARKVIEW 82 OXFORD ROAD UXBRIDGE MIDDLESEX UB8 1UX

CRUNCH TIME FOR THE EVENING MEAL

INTRODUCTION
Monday is a salad and a smoothie at your desk while you catch up on emails; Tuesday a bowl of soup with a colleague for an informal meeting; Wednesdays a late dash to the workplace caf for a sandwich; Thursday a cold buffet during a brainstorming huddle; Friday is fish and chips. The nations eating habits have transformed over the past 100 years reflecting multiple influences on our lives both at work and home that affect how, when and what we choose to eat. While some commentators highlight the negative aspects of such shifts, the reality suggests that what was considered the norm 50 years ago was also the product of recent economic, political influences and the effects werent necessarily negative wartime eating and rationing actually improved the nations health (Medical News Today, 2004). While some of our modern habits could be improved, such as over-consumption of fast food, there is also much to celebrate as we choose flexibility over formality, fresh over processed, crunch over stodge, frequency over a single heavy meal not to mention the colour and contrast of different cultural cuisines and a much broader brush when it comes to food groups. If a big evening meal is a casualty of these new habits, the opportunities to enjoy daytime meals have never been more varied and interesting. Dinner hasnt gone, it has merely evolved into a lighter, fresher smorgasbord a kind of foodie pick and mix.

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FUELLING THE INDUSTRIAL AGE

A brief gallop through history shows that one main meal was generally the norm; its when this meal was eaten that has shifted (and continues to shift). Eating the main meal in the middle of the day was a product of industrialisation not only did workers need a substantial meal to have the energy to do the work they had to do, but industrialisation also reduced the power daylight had to dictate when meals were taken. THE RISE OF LUNCH FROM SNACK TO MEAL. As early as the Middle Ages people ate something in the middle of the day, although lunch as we know it didnt exist not even the word. Daylight shaped mealtimes. With no electricity, people got up earlier to make use of daylight. Workers often toiled in the fields from daybreak, so by midday they were hungry, often having worked for up to six hours. They would take a quick break and eat what was known as a beever or noonshine, usually bread and cheese. But their main meal would take place at nightfall, the end of the working day (Winterman, 2012). As late as 1755 in his A Dictionary of English Language, Samuel Johnson defined lunch as as much food as ones hand can hold (Twilley 2012), suggesting it comes from the word clutch or clunch, it remained very much a snack to tide the individual over until the main meal of dinner. It was the Industrial Revolution that helped shape lunch as we know it today. Middle and lower class eating patterns were defined by working hours. Many worked long hours in factories, away from home, and to sustain them a noon-time meal was essential. So lunch, a former snack, became the days third fixed meal as society urbanised and industrialised and workers were unable to return home for dinner until late at night. The ritual of eating lunch became ingrained in the much more rigid daily routine of industrialisation with factories formalising the midday food break. By the 19th Century chop houses appeared in cities, and office workers were given an hour for lunch. And, as more and more people worked away from home keeping office hours that went beyond daylight hours thanks to the provision of gas to main towns and cities they werent free to dine until later in the evening. This widened the gap between breakfast and dinner, helping lunch to become a fully-fledged meal firmly positioned in the middle of the day (Living History Today, 2012). LUNCH AS A BOUGHT MEAL. Thanks to industrialisation it was a small step from bringing a handful of bread and cheese from home to buying a pie from a stall outside the factory. Soon, all sorts of eating places were catering for the growing town and city lunch market. Pubs and the pie and a pint option evolved alongside the British caf with the defining factor being speed, so the worker could get there, eat and get back to work all within an hour. Eating places sprang up in working districts to service the lunchtime market. Lunch evolved further with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 (Winterman, 2012). Rationing took hold and work-based canteens became the most economical way to feed the masses. (In fact, interestingly, it was this model that was adopted by schools after the war.) And then fast food as we know it today entered the marketplace; the traditional Lyons Corner House restaurants branched out with a special fast-food serving section in 1954 that developed into separate Wimpy restaurants serving only hamburger-based meals (Wimpy, n.d.). Today theres a wide range of lunchtime choice for the worker, from the coffee chains to sandwich bars, fast food chains, quick lunches from restaurants and grab-and-go supermarket sandwich deals. The pub still remains an option, but a static one; food sales have remained steady since the introduction of the smoking ban (Flavour magazine, 2012).

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WORK RULES THE ROOST

Historically a household eating together came about through necessity; one main meal a day was all that there was and you joined in or missed out on the bulk of that days nourishment. Industrialisation broke that rigid pattern; when someone ate was dictated much more by their working situation. Today much is made of the value of a shared household meal, but in practice its a relatively new phenomenon, vulnerable to other pressures both economic and social. During the day, the landscape of modern work has changed too. Apart from the fact that many people prefer to eat lunch at their desks while they work, the rise of the internet and social media mean many of us opt to surf while we eat or use our half-hour break to catch up on our social life so well log on to Facebook or Twitter for a chat with friends instead of meeting them for lunch. Other variables are the growth of home-working and hot-desking, and the proliferation of the call centre. We eat in ways that fit our work and lifestyles and its a fastchanging picture but we know well adapt and fit a meal in somewhere. Cooking for ourselves however is a different matter. admitted they would rather eat in front of the television than sitting at a table with their partner. In fact our hectic lives means one in ten of us eat separately every night of the week, because we all get home at completely different times (McDermott 2012). A SHIFT TO EATING WHEN AND WHERE IS CONVENIENT FOR THE INDIVIDUAL. Time pressures and lifestyle choices make eating on the go an increasing influence on eating and meal time decisions. Without the confines of fixed meal times (in the working day or in the evening) and because of the pressures created by long working hours and busier lifestyles, on-the-go, anytime eating is increasing. Almost half of UK residents now eat on the go and allow themselves a mere 20 minutes for lunch (Totally Living 2012) while 43 per cent skip traditional meal times and eat on the run. Other pressures have forced one in three (37 per cent) to combine breakfast and lunch into a quick brunch, while a fifth (18 per cent) choose to snack five times or more throughout the day and skip their main evening meal. Just over half of all adult snacking (51 per cent) is done alone, with the top three adult alone-eating occasions including the instrumental afternoon snack, instrumental breakfast and instrumental lunch where instrumental reflects a way of eating to get things done (Sung 2012). THE RISE OF INDIVIDUAL FOOD PREFERENCES. As dietary preferences increase and grow more complex the chances that a group of individuals can enjoy the same meal decreases. Children, particularly pre-teen children, are more likely to hold dietary preferences that are given more credence today, and the increased presence of dietary restrictions (food sensitivities, allergies and forms of vegetarianism) make it much harder to find one meal to suit all (The Hartman Group 2004).

DINNER A (RE)HEATED DEBATE

THE SHRINKING DINNER. There may be 24 hours in the day, but were increasingly spending fewer of them making time for dinner. The typical British worker now spends just 11 minutes eating their evening meal (McDermott 2012); in fact the clearing up afterwards takes longer. And in this technologically-dominated age wed rather invest our time in pursuing our individual interests than set aside time to prepare an evening meal for sharing. A quarter of adults surveyed

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THE RISE OF 24 HOUR FOOD AVAILABILITY. Round the clock opening hours mean food is now so easily available theres no need to plan meals ahead, a factor that changes the status of the evening meal as a thought-out, planned event. If the ingredients for the evening meal arent ready in the fridge and store cupboard, then dinner can be moved or replaced without compunction. SNACK TO THE FUTURE. Consumers are increasingly turning to snacking to bridge the gap between meals due to long work and commute times (The Hartman Group 2012). As eating becomes something thats a mechanical function, or an opportunity for instant gratification, snacking is coming into its own. Snacking is less about types of food anymore, but about how food is consumed. The move towards healthier snacking such as seeds, nuts and fruit counteracts the prevailing idea that snacking gets in the way of proper meals and is bad for us. LITTLE AND OFTEN. Consumers increasingly believe that eating smaller meals more frequently is healthier (The Hartman Group 2012). Increased awareness of the importance of getting your five a day and the benefits of keeping blood sugar and energy levels steady reinforce the idea that regular, healthy snacking is a good way of eating. And on the other side of this coin, eating one large meal later in the day is increasingly believed to be an inefficient and unhealthy way of doing things. Healthy small meals or snacks instead of eating whats thought of as a meal is a way for consumers to feel theyre eating less, controlling their portions and cutting their calorie intake. Consumers also believe that by distributing small treat moments throughout the day via snacking theyre helping to avoid over-indulgent binges and that balance can be achieved by rotating indulgent and non-indulgent (Sung 2012).

CONCLUSION. Weve come a long way but nothing ever stays still when it comes to our eating habits. Who knows what our meal times will look like in 100 years time, or even if such a thing will exist at all? Perhaps its time to accept the cultural shift away from big, formal meals and embrace eating occasions that are beneficial to all. These changing cultural behaviours offer potential for light eating in working hours to accommodate more of the days consumption.

CRUNCH TIME FOR THE EVENING MEAL

REFERENCES
Medical News Today (2004) Wartime Rationing helped the British get healthier than they had ever been 21 Jun 2004 [online] http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/9728. php (accessed 10 January 2013) Flavour magazine (2012) How the smoking ban affected pubs and clubs, Flavour magazine, [online] http://www. flavourmagazine.co.uk/features/pubs-and-clubs.php (accessed 2 December 2012). Hartman Group (2004) Whats for dinner? Understanding meal fragmentation as a cultural phenomenon, Hartbeat, 11 November 2004 [online] http://www.hartman-group.com/ hartbeat/what-for-dinner-understanding-meal-fragmentationas-a-cultural-phenomenon (accessed 22 November 2012). Levy, A. (2012) How the family meal has split into two, The Daily Mail, 6 September 2012 [online] http://www.dailymail. co.uk/femail/article-1308067/Death-family-meal-One-motherscook-different-dinners-children-themselves.html (accessed 11 November 2012). Living History Today (2012) Is this lunch or dinner? Living History Today, 17 October 2012 [online], http://www. livinghistorytoday.com/?p=399, (accessed 1 December 2012). McDermott, K. (2012) Now thats fast food, The Daily Mail, 25 October 2012 [online] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ article-2223057/Busy-Britons-wolf-evening-meal-just-11minutes--spend-15-minutes-washing-up.html (accessed 15 November 2012). Mintel Inc. (2010) Business and Industry Catering, Mintel research, Oct 2010 [online] (accessed 1 December). Spicer, H (2010) Sandwiches and lunchtime foods, Mintel research, May 2011 [online] (accessed 1 December). Sung, A (2012) Healthy eating and social snacking as an obesity solution, Hartbeat, 4 October 2012 [online] http:// www.hartman-group.com/hartbeat/healthy-snacking-andsocial-eating-as-an-obesity-solution (accessed 9 December 2012). Totally Living (2012) Lunchtime is just 20 minutes for most Brits, Totally Living, 26 September 2012 [online] http://www. totallyliving.co.uk/food/2012/09/26/lunch-time-is-just-20minutes-for-most-brits (accessed 18 November 2012). Twilley, N (2012), Lunch: an urban invention, Edible Geography, 22 June 2012 [online], http://www. ediblegeography.com/lunch-an-urban-invention/, (accessed 5 December 2012). Wimpy (n.d.) Our history [online], http://www.wimpy.uk.com/ history.asp (accessed 10 December 2012). Winterman, D (2012), Breakfast, lunch and dinner: Have we always eaten them?, BBC News, 15 November 2012 [online], http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243692, (accessed 5 December 2012).

EUREST, FEBRUARY 2013.

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