What on earth is this mealtime snobbery about?

[Diemme]

At 6.45 this evening, DH and I went to sit outside at front of the house to have a coffee and enjoy the last of the sun - we live in a close with benches outside the houses. Almost immediately our neighbours came back from a dog walk. They chatted for a few minutes and then she said she was going in to make dinner. I mentioned just in small talk that we'd already eaten. And I swear she did a head tilt and tinkly laugh as she said gosh that's early. Then she went inside and her husband arranged his face in a sort of patronising / pitiful expression and asked why we'd eaten so early. It's not just them, ive come across it loads of times. It's as if there's a bizarre sense of superiority to eating at 8 rather than say 6.

OP tell your neighbours the Queen eats at 5pm on the dot and if it’s good enough for her it’s good enough for you.

@Lipstick, you can’t just say that — there needs to be a diagram! Are you saying you have a back garden you can’t access or just that all your garden (and doors) are on the same side of the house...?

I eat when I’m hungry rather than on the clock. One of my children who is waiting on an ASD diagnosis tries to eat on the clock - 12pm for lunch and 5pm for tea. It depends on what we are doing and where we need to be. When I’m up at 6am for work and have my lunch at 11:45 which is my allocated time, I’m usually ready for my tea around 5pm. On non work days we get up later and I push lunch back which pushes tea back. The kids are usually starving when they get in from school and depending on activities I make their tea between 4-5pm, even 3:30 if their activity starts at 4:30/5 or they would be famished by the time we got home.

I can’t say I’ve come across meal time snobbery. My in-laws used to eat Sunday lunch around 3pm which I found difficult. They’d get up late and have bacon butties but when I get up I need a lighter cereal type breakfast so would still be hungry for about 1pm.

Whenever I eat an evening meal late I struggle to sleep. I went out this evening for tea to a restaurant at 5:30 and here at 11 pm almost I’m still absolutely stuffed.

As a child we ate tea at around 5pm
My mum didn't work so by the time she'd got all 4 of us home from school, given us a biscuit to keep us going and cooked the meal it was about 5pm.
Now, we eat ar varying times. Sometimes with DD, sometimes me and DD, sometimes me and DH. DH works 2 different shifts in the week and so gets home at different times. I work a few evenings, starting at 6pm, so eat with DD before I go otherwise I'd be eating at 10.30pm. DD has a couple of clubs djeijg term time so her mealtime varies too. It's all very fluid and flexible, but we always call it dinner!

My parents were working class Londoners. Meals were breakfast 7.30,/lunch 1pm/tea 5.45 and supper 9.30 (a snack before going to bed, usually hot milk and a slice of cake/biscuit). Bed at 10.45. Dinner is something you go out for!

But with timings, surely it depends what time you and your family get in from work. And if you or your DH is 7 or later, you’re likely to eat separately from the children who eat earlier. Maybe that’s where the snobbery comes from - that only children eat earlier?

And as far as meal names go. I use dinner interchangeably for the midday meal if it’s hot and the evening meal of its hot. School dinners/hot dinners at school is what we’ve always referred to. Dinner ladies were the staff when we went to school in the 80s and 90s!! Supper on the other hand is a light snack of something like toast before bed. I only hear of supper being referred to as an evening meal when I went to uni and got very confused by one of my flat mates. Regional dialect is a funny old thing. A

I get heartburn/reflux nowadays if I go to bed within 4 hours of finishing dinner so tend to eat early if I want an early night
So YANBU

If your lifestyle dictates that you are up at 5am, whether for commuting to work or your average toddler, you need to be in bed by 10.00 or 11.00pm. That doesn't give your digestion adequate time to work efficiently with a late evening meal. Easiest way to put on weight as your not getting time to burn it off. Are you sure your not reading too much into your neighbours body language?

We have supper. Tea is just the drink, isn’t tea as a meal a northern expression?
I’ve never heard anyone near me (in NW London) have ‘tea’ as an evening meal - it’s a drink or a posh high tea which would be mid afternoon, 3ish.
Dinner is more formal - we’d go out to dinner, supper is a casual version of dinner, a light weekday meal is supper.

As an American this is an incredibly interesting thread!!

As an American this is an incredibly interesting thread!!

It’s a really good example of British snobbery - both straight and inverted!

The irony is that universal tea drinking is a comparatively recent part of British life.

We always had Sunday lunch at 3ish. My ex boyfriends parents had it at 1 and I found that difficult as I couldn’t eat a massive meal at that time!
Luckily my now in laws live in Spain so Sunday lunch is around 4pm

I have no class
We eat when hungry
Some nights dinner is 6pm others as late as 10.30

what do people DO after dinner if they eat at 6?

Probably just me, but this really made me laugh. Sounds like something Maggie Smith’s Dowager countess character might say in Downton Abbey.

Eating early is definitely better for your health. When I had gestational diabetes the nurse recommended that I stop eating for the night by 6, 7pm at a push.
It also helps your body to have a 12 hour fast each night if you aren’t finishing dinner at 9pm.
The research on fasting is a little muddled, but it’s clear that a 12 hour fast overnight each day is very good for our organs. (The 5/2 thing is a little more debatable, works for some people.)

what do people DO after dinner if they eat at 6?

Probably just me, but this really made me laugh. Sounds like something Maggie Smith’s Dowager countess character might say in Downton Abbey.

Sounds like the song from the musical Camelot: "What do the simple folk do?"

I agree with earlier poster that it's a work thing.

It's interesting that all these people eating at 5pm must have a job that finishes at the latest 4pm.

Some people, you know, have inflexible, long-hours jobs, or lengthy commutes. Dinner on the table at 5pm? That means dh would never have had a dinner! (Nor my father, come to that.)

I bet it's the same people wailing that some people earn too much and it's not faaaiiiirrrr who are smugly sitting down and relaxing as a family by 5pm.

So, weirdly, even though I am "posh", years of boarding school have left me needing my tea at 6pm! Although, mostly we tend to eat when everyone has got home which is usually closer to 8pm these days. So my poshness has left me conflicted..

Im in Dublin and as from next week my dinner will be at 12.I like my main meal early.I can enjoy it in peace.

Kids come in at 2.45,they will have there dinner then.As we dont get cooked meals here in school.

Dp comes in at 5,he has his dinner then.

We tried it that the kids get fed first and we have our dinner about 7.That lasted about a week as [a] we where starving and [b] we where starving

I think it depends where your from geographically also. Breakfast is around 7, Lunch is around 12/1 and dinner at 7.
No one in my part of the world, calls dinner “Tea” that’s a drink.
I don’t think it’s snobby, it’s about commuting and convenience and type of work. Different strokes for different folks

But with the 12 hour fast thing.. surely that depends on the timing of breakfast, as much as the timing of dinner? So if I don’t eat my breakfast until mid morning (sometimes don’t eat breakfast at all) then dinner at 7.30 and a biscuit or something before bed should be fine?

But with the 12 hour fast thing.. surely that depends on the timing of breakfast, as much as the timing of dinner?

Exactly. I eat dinner at 9ish, breakfast between around 10-11am.

My DH is self employed its not uncommon for him to get home at 9pm if work is busy. Sometimes i eat with my kids (around 6.30 or 7) sometimes i wait for him. We go to bed quite late anyway.
My inlaws eat at really random times and i found it really hard when DC were small. They would do dinner for 8pm and the DC would get told off for filling themselves up with bread and not eating dinner when they were actually beyond hunger and tiredness because it was being served at their bedtime!!

Agree about work determining things to an extent.

My PILs still eat their main meal of the day ('dinner' for them) at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, because, despite both having retired long since, they both had very physical early-morning jobs (binman and hospital cleaner) for much of their working lives, and were finished and home early, and had to have early bedtimes to get ready again for a 4 am start -- so everything was skewed to 'early'.

It does make it very difficult to invite them out to a restaurant, though, as they are extremely set in their ways, and think that even the very earliest time the kitchen opens in many restaurants (I mean six o'clock or so) is impossibly late to eat...

This is really bringing back the sorts of linguistic gymnastics I underwent when my children were in KS2. So, old enough (from 8 or so) to wait for their evening meal until DH came in, but requiring a decent snack post school.

So an invite for a post-school playdate would involve me saying: "Would little X like to come round to play until 5 and have a drink and a snack?" or (if my children were keen for a longer playdate and willing to forgo the family evening meal): "Would little X like to come round to play until 6 and have their evening meal? Do they like pasta?". The pasta bit (or whatever food) was to reinforce the fact they'd be having a main meal.

Otherwise, "tea" (which was the snack type thing to me) could mean the other parent expecting a snack for their child or - on one occasion - being quite shirty because X wasn't fully fed and watered with sausage and chips by the time they went home.