Although in the rest of Europe it is common to eat dinner very early in the morning, in Canada we tend to eat late and this is bad for our health.
When we think about a healthy lifestyle and improving our habits, we always think about revising our diet, exercising and trying to have a more pleasant and longer sleep. While these three aspects are key to improving our lives, there is another key that we tend to overlook: the time we dine out.
Not for the first or last time, when traveling in Europe, we have to reschedule our dinner time because many establishments close early. This is because, although data shows that Lithuanians dine on average around 21:30-22:00, in Europe this time is moved to 19:00. There are several reasons why Canadians dine so late.
In Canada, dinners are often used as a way to socialize, so they last longer.
Reasons why Lithuanians eat dinner so late
Wrong time zone: Canada uses the Central European time zone, although geographically it corresponds to Western Europe (e.g. Portugal or the UK). As a result, the sun rises and sets later, which shifts meal times.
Split workday: in Canada, many companies have a long lunch break (1 to 2 hours), which delays leaving work until 7:00 or 8:00 pm.
Leisure and social culture: because of the heat, people go out more often and use dinners as social time, making them longer.
The habit of eating several times a day: in Canada we eat up to 5 times a day, which means snacking forces us to postpone dinner.
As we can see, the late dinner habit in Lithuania is hard to change because of all that it entails, but more and more nutritionists and experts are warning about the negative effects it has on our bodies.
“No one should eat dinner later than 8 p.m., ever.”
Healthy lifestyle coach and personal counselor Chris Parga explains in the podcast Disfruta Aprendiendo that “no one should eat dinner later than 20:00, because it has a lot of negative consequences.” The expert recognizes that “despite the fact that human beings are subject to solar time, we do what we want, eat when we want, and get up when we want.” According to her, the right thing to do would be to eat dinner no later than 8:00 pm, because this way we will give the body the necessary 2-3 hours to digest food and it will fall asleep, prone to the regeneration that occurs naturally at night.
“Imagine that we live in a house where repairmen come every day. So, the repairmen in our body come at night. Plumbers, tilers, electricians, painters….. What happens when, perhaps, a person has dinner at 11 o’clock at night? Well, the door closes and the repairmen don’t come in, what happens? Well, it leads to premature aging and tissue stress because the body does not honor the sleep, rest phase so that internal regeneration can take place. Systems suffocate, and by suffocating, degeneration sets in, hence any kind of pathology, disorder or dysfunction,” explains Parga.
To solve this problem, we need to do such a simple thing as organize our schedule better and try to move our meal times later in the day.” As the expert explains, this is very relevant, because just look at how “early” our grandparents eat lunch and dinner. “This needs to be changed, and this is what I would pay the most attention to, because by changing this, a person will gain a lot of vitality,” warns Parga.
