Who came up with the idea of "3 square meals a day" ?

Answer 1

From the U.K. Naval Past...
from: http://www.the-old-sea-dog.net/uk8.html

Three square meals a day.

In the days of the old wooden sailing ships, food and fresh water was always a problem, therefore feeding a hardworking crew would have been very difficult.

There was no electricity therefore no refrigeration and the only fuel source to provide hot food were wood burning stoves.

Meat and fish was dried and salted to be stored in barrels. There would have been few vegetables once the ship had been at sea for any length of time. Fruits were unheard of except perhaps apples stored in barrels. Hence the expression "one bad apple" would contaminate all within the barrel. It must have been soul destroying to open up a fresh barrel of apples only to find that they were all bad and had to be thrown over the side.

With no fresh vegetables and little fruit, the sailors diet was seriously deficient in vitamin C. The result was a common disease known as scurvy. To overcome this Royal Naval ships crews were given a daily ration of Lime juice and even in my days in the Navy this ration is still made available when certain arduous conditions prevailed. This was noticed by the American before the war of independence and hence the English are still referred to as "Limeys" to this day.

Larger ships would take to sea with live animals to be butchered and eaten at a later date and as the journey length was dependant on the wind and weather, it would have been extremely difficult to plan domestic arrangements with any certainty.

In bad weather with the ship being tossed like a cork on the waves, the wood burning stove was a dangerous device which if it got out of hand would consume the wooden ship. In extreme conditions hot food was difficult to provide and yet most foods would require cooking to kill the bacteria and make them edible.

The ships carpenter would make plates for the crew and the easiest way to make a plate was to cut a square section piece of wood. Square shaped plates could be stowed away easily and wooden ones would not break irrespective of how violent the ships movement might become. There was no sort of turning machine to make round plates and that would have been seen as an unnecessary expense.

So when the sea state allowed and there was sufficient food available, every effort would have been made to provide the crew with a hot edible meal. This would have been collected from the galley and eaten with relish on the mess deck table utilising the square section plate.

Therefore if you achieved "Three Square meals a day" you were doing very well. An expression still used today in everyday English

Answer 2

The idea comes from the Greeks, Arabs and also the Jews because the idea comes since you wake up you have to eat something to have a good morning and to start in the best way your day, the lunch idea comes from the fact that their society wanted a moment of reunion during the noon and for the occasion it was needed food to gather the ones in the reunion and the dinner idea comes from the idea of gathering people for a last time during the evening and the tradition is that dinner has to be made by eating food in small portions to give the soul a break and to your body, this is a historical fact!

3 square meals a day is an idea adopted by our early society from the greeks, arabs and jews and by the biological fact that every 6 hours your body requests a replenish of energy given by food!

Good Luck and hope this answers your question in the best way possible!

Answer 3

Probably the National Health Board or some such.

It was to highlight the fact that we need the 4 food groups 3 times a day. 3 squares.

Answer 4

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
Who came up with the idea of "3 square meals a day" ?

Answer 5

Before the industrial revolution most people did have 5-6 small meals. The idea of three meals (only one during working hours) was introduced to allow less breaks for people working in the factories.

Answer 6

This common term for a satisfying and filling repast (as in “three square meals a day”) leads many amateur etymologisers towards origins based on a literal reading of the words:

Sailors used to eat off wooden boards; these were square in shape and were usually not filled with food. However, after a heavy watch the sailors were given a large meal which filled the board — a square meal.
In Britain of yore, a dinner plate was a square piece of wood with a bowl carved out to hold your serving of the perpetual stew that was always cooking over the fire. You always took your ‘square’ with you when you went travelling, in hopes of a square meal.
In former times in the US military, you were required to sit formally at meals, bolt upright with arms at right-angles, so forming a square shape. So a meal in the mess was always a square meal.

Wonderful stuff. Rubbish, of course, but entertaining rubbish.

It’s an interesting comment on the imagination of such storytellers that they haven’t created similar stories about square deal or fair and square. Yet these also employ square for something that is fair, honest, honourable or straightforward. Older phrases of similar type include the square thing and square play. Several of them date to the seventeenth century and even possibly earlier. This figurative sense comes from the idea that something made with exact right angles has been properly constructed (right in right angle is another reference to the same idea). Some of these may derive from Masonic ritual.

We know that square meal was originally American. Early examples seem to have come out of miners’ slang from the western side of the country. Mark Twain, in The Innocents Abroad, refers to it as a Californian expression and that squares, so to speak, with the oldest example I know of, which appeared in the Mountain Democrat of Placerville, California (a gold-mining town) of 8 November 1856: “We have secured the services of an excellent cook, and can promise all who patronize us that they can always get a hearty welcome and a ‘square meal,’ at the ‘Hope and Neptune.’” A slightly later one appeared in 1862 in the Morning Oregonian of Portland, Oregon, about a hotel that had opened in the town: “If you want a good square meal and a clean bed to sleep in, give Mr Lee a call.”


I found a further reference in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine of 1865, about the mining town of Virginia City in Nevada, created to serve the famous Comstock lode. “Says the proprietor of a small shanty, in letters that send a thrill of astonishment through your brain: ‘LOOK HERE! For fifty cents you CAN GET A GOOD SQUARE MEAL at the HOWLING WILDERNESS SALOON!’”

The writer felt the need to explain this strange phrase: “A square meal is not, as may be supposed, a meal placed upon the table in the form of a solid cubic block, but a substantial repast of pork and beans, onions, cabbage, and other articles of sustenance.”

Just so. Modern storytellers please copy.

Answer 7

White Castle

Answer 8

The "FDA" & McDonalds

Answer 9

meat loaf rice greens