| Summary: | When questioned, people typically report that different foods are appropriate at different times of day. What is more, patterns of food consumption tend to exhibit marked diurnal/circadian variations in many parts of the world too. The question addressed in this review is what factors help to explain these temporal differences in food consumption. While it has been suggested that our nutritional needs may differ somewhat over the course of the day, cultural conventions, marketing-led interventions, atmospheric (e.g., think only of changes in ambient temperature and/or daily light levels), perceptual (i.e., threshold) and/or hedonic changes, as well as psychological factors have also been suggested to play a role. Taken together, though, the evidence reviewed here would appear to support the view that cultural and psychological factors, not to mention the ubiquitous influence of food marketing, may be the most important factors in terms of helping to explain why it is that so many of us choose to eat different foods at different times of the day. Relevant psychological factors here include everything from the purported depletion of self-restraint resources over the course of the day through to the fulfilment of different psychological needs (e.g., functional or hedonic) associated with different mealtimes. Given the unhealthy foods typically associated with breakfast in many western countries (e.g., think only of sugar-laden breakfast cereals), gaining a better understanding of the factors underpinning current temporal patterns of food consumption may potentially help those wanting to nudge consumers toward making healthier food choices in the future.
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