Precarious finances: 38% of Europeans no longer eat three meals a day

You don't eat three meals a day because you have no money.
I don't eat three meals a day because I want to lose weight.
We're not the same.
- You don't eat three meals a day because you want to lose weight
  I don't eat three meals a day because shit is it already 5 pm? Why did my hunger response not say anything? Time to eat my entire daily caloric allowance in one sitting
  We're not the same
  
  I don't eat three meals a day because I take my work drugs for that sweet temp upgrade from ADHD to AD4K instead.
- I do both, so kinda the same but not quite?
- On any given day I can eat 1-4 meals.
  It depends if I’m hungry. Mostly it’s 2 meals and I stop when I’m full.
  I think it helps that I treat food like fuel rather than something I actively enjoy doing. On the days I’m more active I’m more hungry and so eat more.
  There is no point to this comment other than to put out my odd relationship with food I guess.
  
  That's okay, we all have our quirks.
  When in really into the zone (whatever zone that might be) I tend to not have any appetite and "forget" to eat. But that doesn't happen all this often. Also, I just like good, or basically yummy food. Makes it kind of hard to change your habits and eat junk only about once weekly.
- Its actually contra productive to skip one meal for that, just eat but less.
  
  Why is it contra productive? If their daily calorie intake goes down than it is effective. That’s all that matters. Doesn’t matter if they achieve that trough intermittent fasting or calorie restriction.
  
  Nah man, two meals a day is whete it's at

I haven't eaten three times a day in almost 20 years. Nothing to do with money - I just like black coffee in the morning and nothing else.
- Breakfast is against nature and I am ready to die on this hill.
  
  Try telling this to my kids..

The actual statistic of the headline is that people surveyed reported that over the last two years they "sometimes" or "regularly" no longer ate three meals a day because of inflation and the fall in their purchasing power.

But, but... Neoliberalism is for your good and anything socialist is bad.
It's time to end neoliberalism.

Unless those meals are teeny tiny, 3 meals a day reliably means weight gain for me
- Yep ditto. I have to stick to 2 a day most of the time and do regular cardio. Shit sucks
- Did you count the calories on those meals? Because my meals are always pretty much exactly on 450kcals, so that's only 1350kcals. With a Banana, a proteine shake, milk coffees and a chocolate bar that would still be way below 2000kcals.

But remember: Communism is bad. Capitalism will make everyone well-off, any day now!
- No, no, we must open borders and let everyone in so that big corporation do not have to pay more salaries, and so the minimum wage does not increase, and anyway only old people are a burden on the social welfare system right? We have enough doctors and surgeons, comrads.
  
  Just tell us you’re scared of the brown people moving into your neighborhood and move on.

and here I am trying to eat 4-5 times a day to get >3000 calories in so I can gain weight.
- Whole milk brother. It's much easier to drink than eat calories
  
  Yeah, that's probably something I need to look into as I don't really drink milk. Not sure if whole milk has 'too much' fat as I also don't want to gain weight in a bad way. I'm looking to build muscle and get lean but nothing crazy like under 15% body fat. I'd be happy with 220 lbs and 20-25% body fat.
- 2-3 meals a day and gaining weight over here. Nuts are your best friend if you're bulking.
  
  I guess it matters how heavy you already are but 3 meals a day isn't enough for me to hit 100KG. Nuts is something I do need to eat more often.

When I order food they often have a minimum order value in money. It's usually so much, I just can't eat more than one meal. I know in advance, so I skip breakfast and get full at lunch, then skip diner too, because I'm still full.
- Just out of interest: have you considered preparing your meals yourself?
  
  This. Skipping a meal to afford food delivery is not a financial problem. It's like saying "I am poor because I can only afford to drive one way with my Lamborghini and have to walk home".
  
  I do that sometimes, but I'm rich so I usually don't feel like doing it.

Who eats three meals a day and why? I haven't eaten three meals a day in years now, and I surely have more than enough money to afford food.

Hopefully it’ll help with the obesity epidemic.
- I bet it will make it worst: the cheapest foods are the worst in terms of calories density.
  They will get fat but malnourished.
  
  Yes, that's what we are already seeing. People always laugh about USA, but regarding overweight and Diabetes Type 2 we are on a fast track to get even with them. And when politicians want to intervene the sugar lobby fights back really hard. (Here in Germany they came with the argument that a ban on advertising for Sweets would interfere with the freedom of speech 🤦‍♂️)
  
  How will eating 3 junky meals be better than eating 2 of them?
  Seems there's a lot of latent anxiety about fat-shaming in this thread. Being fat is unhealthy, end of story.
- It's not nearly as bad as in the US but unfortunately people are getting fatter here too. What we don't have is peoole so fat they can barely walk. But 15kg too much on a 60 year old person? Way too common.

If true, which it's basically not, this is dumb distraction and click-bait.
So what is this "third meal" that so many people are supposedly giving up? Kebab? Big Mac and fries? Well surely that's a win for everyone? Duh.
Sorry, but the reality is that poor people are not literally going hungry anywhere in Europe. Anyone who opens their eyes can see that. In almost every country in the world today, i.e. except the very poorest, poor people are fatter than rich people.
Completely inane and irrelevant and insulting to intelligence.
Addendum. To clarify, my point is that the problem with food today is the quality, the calories, the correlation with social inequality. It's not the quantity and it's certainly not the number of meals taken. Idiotic.
- If only there was some way to confirm, short of only reading the headline, if theres more to this.
  Oh, apparently theres further text in the article, for example 29% said their financial situation is precarious. 11% say they regularly dont eat enough, so they have enough food for their kids, 24% say theyre very concerned with coping with the increase in food prices. Oh and 12%, within the past 6 months, have skipped meals while hungry.
  So the article sources survey data, you're basing your claims on better primary data I take it? Or maybe secondary public health database datasets? Something else?
  
  Yes, exactly.** Reading the article disproves the headline. **
  When I hear 'not eating three meals a day' I do not think 'has skipped one meal in the last two years.' (which is how the headline get's it's 38% statistic.)
  It's not that deprivation does not exist in the EU, it's that the scale of that deprivation is of an entirely different order than implied by the headline.
  
  I don't get this. My problem is being taken to be a fool.
  How do you, personally, square these two observations:
  There's a worldwide obesity epidemic affecting all but the poorest of countries, and within each society the fattest people tend to be the poorest ones
  Poor people - in rich Europe - are so poor that they can't eat enough meals
  Sorry, but something has to give. Which is it?
  Addendum. Downvoting just proves you have no answer to the question.
- While I think that you've got a valid broader point about misrepresentation -- my pet peeve is the use of "relative poverty" in poverty infographics, which has got nothing to do with being poor, but rather is a sort of metric of inequality -- I'm not sure that describes what is going on here. They highlight Moldova as having a particularly high rate of going without meals. Moldova is not, by European standards, wealthy, but also has a low obesity rate by European standards.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate
  You wouldn't expect to see that if the poorer == more obese effect dominated in that case.
  
  Finally, a decent rebuttal to my argument!
  I agree about the conflation of absolute and relative poverty.
- How fucking dare you. Pick up your pitchfork and put your blindfold back on right this instant.