Photo: Rene EhrhardtThe average American spends about one hour at meals, and about the same time grazing — eating as a secondary activity to something else (very often leisure). But how does this differ across the population? Those whose time is valuable — who have a high wage — have an incentive to multi-task, to graze rather than devote their full time to meals.
Moreover, since setting up meals takes time (has fixed costs), higher-wage people have an incentive to engage in more incidents of grazing and have relatively fewer meals. This simple bit of economics describes what we observe in detailed data from the American Time Use Survey. It’s another illustration of how economic thinking can predict and explain phenomena that, at first blush, would hardly seem to be economic.
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I am pretty sure in the rest of the Western world (i.e. Europe) it is exactly the other way round. There, a higher income often goes along with sophistication, traditional values and refined manners, which goes along with sitting down at the table in a proper way when eating.
Doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t make a lot of money, and am tired from work all the time – too tired to fix dinner. I just eat whenever I’m hungry and hardly ever cook.
I’m not trying to be too critical of this line of reasoning, but this seems like over rationalization to me. Seems like if the results had come in the exact opposite we could’ve found a perfectly reasonable way of explaining it.
The American way is chomping on fast foods and getting back into the rat race. I am sure there are more relevant and important issues to study
Hannes, Your picture of sophisticated Europe is a bit out of date. In many European countries the mid-day sit down meal has gone by the wayside. Europe is now full of double income families struggling to get something prepared for dinner after picking the children up from daycare. The grocery store aisles are full of microwaveable meals for dinner and prepared sandwiches for lunch.
Actually Lorena, you’re wrong. I live in Barcelona and all the shops close between 2 and 4/5pm, so shop workers take either the morning or the evening shift and have a long lunch either way. I work at an internet company and everyone stops for at least an hour for lunch, bringing in elaborate home prepared meals in tuperware boxes (often prepared by mother – people live at home well in to their late 20s and early 30s). I agree with Hannes – in continental europe at least, people work to live, not the other way around. The more money you have, the longer you spend eating and enjoying yourself. London is more like the states though – everyone on a decent income stuffs down a sandwich at their desks.
simpler explanation: rich guy goes to chock-full frig and grazes
poor guy goes to empty frig and doesn’t graze
Hmmn. Perhaps it’s the difference between Northern Europe and Southern Europe. I live in the Netherlands and have lived in various Central European cities where I’ve seen the old meal regimes deteriorate rapidly in the last twenty years. Even my wealthy, highly educated, very old, European mother-in-law orders plenty of microwave meals in her weekly shopping.
There is a tremendous rise in the amount of organic food available here in the Netherlands though. Families are willing to pay sometimes double the price for organics. I don’t get the impression that they are slowing down their meal habits to eat those organics though. A lot of it is prepared.