Who invented lunch time

As late as the midth century, dinner referred to the meal eaten in the middle of the day, not the one eaten at the end. Over time, the largest meal of the day moved later and later in the day, until it was the evening meal.

As dinner became established as a meal eaten in the evening or at night, there came a need for a meal in the middle of the day…or for some kind of sustenance. At the same time, there was an English word nuncheon, which meant a midday meal.

The first written use of snack as a noun dates to the late 18th century. While no one can deny the importance of better eating for growing minds or the enthusiasm of First Lady Michelle Obama , critics claim the program has produced unpalatable foods that lead to food waste, smaller earnings for school lunch programs, and even more kids going without lunch. A report declares that, in spite of the hubbub in cafeterias across the country, the new act is indeed providing kids with healthier food at school.

And surely we can all agree on the importance of their original role: a means to make sure children are well fed and healthy, so they can grow and learn and better the nation. Emelyn Rude is a food historian and the author of Tastes Like Chicken , available now. Contact us at letters time. A school lunch as specified by the Dept. By Emelyn Rude. Related Stories. Already a print subscriber? Go here to link your subscription.

LS: Well, speaking of eating at your desk, women were most often bringing lunch from home. They couldn't go out for lunch, for fear of getting jostled in the big crowds, or simply because they couldn't afford it, since they were getting paid half of what the men were. So they would bring lunch, or buy a cake or ice cream on the street, and take it back to the office. There was this whole genre of advice literature to working girls about how they should eat a nice, healthy lunch, instead of this junk food.

RF: And the cafeterias, the lunch spots, were very crowded, so there are also advice pieces about "what's a girl to do in a cafeteria? LS: But then you see chains like Schrafft's opening up by the '40s, where you had these very nice, feminine little restaurants with genteel service and ice cream and sandwiches on cheese bread and things like that.

You had to make a little more money to go there, it wasn't cheap, but it was a real "ladies' lunch. RF: Also, though, women going to work totally changed how kids ate. Lunch at home was the meal for women and children, but when women started working, these kids had nowhere to go for lunch. So they'd eat street food, which wasn't very healthy, so charity organizations stepped to feed them during the day. They were called "shut-outs," because they couldn't get back home to eat. What kind of physical evidence is there for lunch at home, though?

LS: You have a lot of advice literature and cookbooks, but really you have to look at things like the sale of bread, and the rise of peanut butter, and how these foodstuffs got into daily life. Besides the automat, which is obviously awesome, do you have any favorite items in the show?

RF: Yeah, we have a section on the iconic lunch foods of New York, and one of them is sushi. The accepted story is that sushi didn't come to New York until the '60s, after getting started in Los Angeles, but we found this menu in the collection from , from a restaurant on 42nd Street, and it has sushi on it!

And that could mean, you know, rice with vinegar, but it also has sashimi on the menu. We checked the property records for that spot, and sure enough, a Japanese restaurant existed there for about a year. LS: And that's a good 30 years before anyone thought that there was sushi in New York. It was clearly not just catering to Japanese diners, too, because the menu is printed in English and Japanese. And their sukiyaki daily special came with the not-especially-Japanese appetizer of celery and olives, so you know they were trying to appeal to a mainstream clientele.

Do you think that lunch has changed much recently? It seems like people don't really just eat a hot dog for lunch, these days. LS: But there's a hot dog cart on every corner! So who's eating all the hot dogs? RF: I think people still are eating hot dogs. I mean, I'll go to Grand Central and get a hot dog sometimes.