Good grief, 3+ meetings aren't meetings, they are work sessions. Not only you need physical breaks, but you do need mental breaks as well (like allowing the conversation to drift to some light-hearted off topic banter for a bit).

Regarding the OP (with which I completely agree) - I think the problem is that some people are really talented "referees" but in some organisational structures the meeting is "run" by the senior person in the room or the person who called the meeting, who may very well be poor referees. It would be great if people recognised that So-And-So is really good at meeting herding (as I think of it) so let them run the meeting even if it isn't "theirs".