Taco Tuesday

     Have you ever craved a taco at 4 am? Do you have pancakes for dinner every other night? Why can't we have a drink before noon? These are a few questions surrounding the occurrence of food. Our fast-food diets have spoiled us in having it our way right away any time of the day. Yet we still hold on to the temperance of when and what a meal is. What happened to breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

     Us humans are generally regarded as omnivores. That is, we eat both plants and other animals. In the food world this means that we'll pretty much eat anything. In fact, for over 190,000 years with early Homo sapiens that was the case. We were hunters and gatherers. We were pure survivalists. Whenever we found something or killed something, if it didn't kill us, we ate it. Our meals were whatever we could get our hands on at that time. When seasons changed, so did our diets. Sometimes less plants and more animals. Humans were nomads and migrated with animals following where their food went. You pretty much didn't have a choice in the matter either. You could be eating venison and berries every day for two-thirds of the year. When you ate something it better have been good. Who knew when you'd see it again. It was far different than our diets and eating habits today. However a few things remain.

     Humans were and still are the greatest opportunists. We're the kings of making it simple and easy. We'll take every shortcut to get what we want even if it be damned. So about 10,000 years ago we took a chance to change our food sources, settled into the far reaches of the globe, and started farming. This experiment was highly successful and now we trade, buy, and steal food that's been made through modern agriculture. Today we're only limited by what we can grow. Simply put, we eat everything any time. In comparison to old humans, we have vastly more variety in diet but our sedentary lifestyle and need for simplicity has replaced the ability to make more meaningful choices.

     On a side note: why don't Paleo diets (eating like a caveman) work for most people? The answer is discipline. We have too many choices. History tells up we'll always make the easier choice when it comes to food. In order to eat like a caveman, you must be committed to working hard to find nutritious foods. We generally don't have the discipline to fight for our food instead of having it brought to us.

     What does any of this have to do with breakfast burritos? Breakfast, lunch and dinner are the lasting echoes of history when we needed to ration food. In order to make it last and eat it when it was fresh we needed to spread it out throughout the day. What came available at that time of the day dictated what we ate. For example: Chicken eggs laid early each morning were breakfast. Fish caught that day was served as dinner because it didn't last until morning (unless preserved in salt like lox for breakfast). Necessity being the mother of invention, we changed everything again with modern refrigeration and food preservation. Our meals today are basically limitless. Theoretically, you could have cake and ice cream for breakfast every day.
     So what's stopping us from the dream diets of a three year old? Well we're smarter. We know that if we ate too much unhealthy food so early in the day, there'd be no desert to look forward to after dinner. We know that if we didn't eat something other than candy for lunch, we'd never have enough energy throughout the day. We know so much more of what nutrition the body requires and try to eat a balanced diet that works well with our active lifestyles.
     Late night munchies happen and that's OK. We're still very much opportunists and there's no time like the present. It's alright to have a bloody Mary with breakfast. Hell, have a liquid lunch! We just shouldn't make a habit of it.