The recent question about lunch vs. dinner made me wonder

16 comments
  1. Probably whenever more people switched to jobs that were based in a factory/office kind of environment vs working something like a farming/ woodworking/ etc that would be done more at/near home.

  2. I work from home now so I eat lunch at home. I think most people eat at work or at a place nearby work. If their home is close to work, then they might eat at home (I used to do both examples).

  3. Probably with the rise of urbanization and better transportation when most people were farmers or worked with in waking distance to work going home is easy but when you work is half an hour drive away it’s not very practical.

  4. It would be a 1 1/2 hour round trip for me to go home, eat and get back to work. What kind of question is this?

  5. Probably during the industrial revolution, which kickstarted the whole “going to work” thing as we know it.

  6. I would say that it was a part of industrialization when people moved away from farming or other jobs that would keep them either at or near their homes. When your commute time is longer than your lunch break, eating lunch at home isn’t really an option.

  7. I mean, English have those hand pies for tin miners to eat on the job don’t they?

  8. Probably when our economy stopped being based mostly on agriculture. If your job is to work your family farm you can eat lunch at home. If you work in a factory or a shop then you probably can’t, unless you own the shop and live there or just live really close by.

  9. I live 10-15 miles from my job, which is actually pretty standard for a lot of people. Not possible to take a lunch break at home when it takes 25-30 minutes to get there.

  10. Probably when it stopped being normal to work on the farm or in the local factory.

    Once you’ve got a commute of more than about a 10, maybe 15 minute walk, it’s just not practical to come home for lunch even if you’ve got a full hour. And even today, I know people who live that close to work who do go home for lunch every day.

  11. My guess would be when industrialization happened. Can’t eat lunch at home when you’re required to be in a dangerous factory 14 hours a day.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like