For example, I have LEO friends, who often work 12-16 hour shifts. They get off work at 6 am, and will want to eat, which is usually “breakfast” time based on typical traditional notions of “breakfast” for people who work a 9-5 schedule, but he will have something along the lines of pasta and soup (for example) because for him, based on his body clock and work schedule, it is “dinner” time.
Same for some of my friend’s children who are residents. They work gawd awful hours and when they are “off” and they decide to eat, their meals are not necessarily simpatico with the time of day, or the type of food, one would associate with the sequence of their meal.
Though I think people with irregular shifts / work hours define lots of things differently given their day is upside down, so I don’t think that affects the general definition of meals.
In “normal” working hour tales, a guy who worked for me was on a diet where he didn’t eat till 6pm, then his first meal was 8 slices of bacon. Don’t really think it mattered if he called that “breakfast” - or “daily heart attack contribution” (He was insanely fit, however.)
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Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
23
Many years ago, my late FiL worked as an aircraft baggage loader, on a 3 shift pattern. As I recall that was 0600-1400, 14.00-22.00, and 22.00-0600. The shift allocation was awful - there was rarely a run of the same shifts that you could settle in to. Anyway, “breakfast”, of the bacon/eggs/toast variety was what he ate when he woke up, at whatever time that was. “Lunch” was while he was at work. And “dinner” sometime after he got home and before he went to sleep.
The roomate works a very complicated non- schedule of varied shifts; he never knows when he’ll be away or home. We pack him a meal and a snack (usually an assortment of reheatable leftovers, a sandwich, a ‘heat-n-eat’ processed entree, fruit, green salad with a wee bottle of dressing, homemade spreads or cheese with crackers etc.) or even two in an insulated soft cooler bag, because dine in or take out is rarely available when he wants to eat and he’s gone 24-48 hours at a time. “Tough job, but you can’t beat the scenery”, he says.
(He was insanely fit, however.)