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Comment by juancn | Hacker News Reader

Duh! A large chunk of the world eats dinner after 9pm and obesity rates are lower or the same than other countries.

Spain and the south of France comes to mind as examples.

Personally, when i arrived in the usa 8 years ago i was surprised that people eat dinner at 5:00 pm. In India,where i am from this time was meant for some light snacks and coffee/tea. So you get some light food to fuel you till you have dinner much later.

It's more of a cultural thing and no single thing is good or bad.

Are these people without jobs that eat dinner at 5pm? Most people I know are still at work at 5pm.

Many people seem to snack in the office around 5.

I only remember a handful of times in my life where I ate dinner before 8pm. 20h30/21h is the usual time for dinner where I live.

For me even earlier; before I came to university it was around 19:30, and now that I'm here dinner is available from 17:00 to 19:30..

Seriously. Southern Europe is pretty thin - and Italy, Spain, Southern France all eat late.

Not in Northern Italy :)

I would like to know why the downvotes, my wife is from Milan and her family from a town near Bergamo and everybody I know have dinner between 19:00 and 19:30

My mom's side of the family is from Genova. They liked to eat a little later, but not absurdly late. I've spent a lot of time in Rome and Florence, not as much up north, and even in those places most restaurants don't open until 19:00 or 19:30, and the local traffic really picks up closer to 20:00.

In any case, I'm not downvoting you, but I will point out that 19:30 is late for dinner by US standards. Around here most folks are having dinner immediately after work. My wife, for instance, will usually have dinner on the table at 5:30PM on the dot. Too early for me, but we have a 4 year old! (I digress)

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