Eating disorder

The class system, with its fixed mealtimes, stopped us all from getting fat, says Andrew M. Brown. Today we are a nation of all-day munchers — and it shows

Imagine if, at breakfast, a mother were to offer her family, instead of cornflakes or boiled eggs, slices from a gigantic cake smothered in icing. Would that seem odd? Well, yes, it would: but that’s exactly what a lot of us do — eat cake for breakfast. A muffin is a cake by another name. And on our way to work plenty of us snap up a white chocolate and strawberry muffin, say, from Starbucks, at 583 calories, and wash it down with 300 calories’ worth of warm coffee-flavoured milk.

Our readiness to guzzle cake at any time of the day or night, and not only at around four o’clock — the time our ancestors set aside for tea — is a symptom of a wholesale change in behaviour. The class system in Britain has unravelled and, at the same time, a kind of relaxation, or deregulation, has occurred in our way of eating. Once, British life was more prescriptive. You had your meals at fixed times, they were fairly formal occasions, and they served as potent indicators of class. What time you sat down to eat, whether you referred to ‘luncheon’ or ‘dinner’, ‘tea’ or ‘supper’ — these things shouted out your origins, as well as your aspirations. Now, few bother with meals at set times except in conditions of exceptional formality. Instead, we have become a nation of all-day munchers, who cannot tolerate the discomfort of waiting for lunch, as we were taught to do in childhood. The classless society has made us fat.