Four O'Clock Sugar

This is utter trivia but in a way it's kind of profound, too.

I've been thinking that in at least one respect the Brits and the Germans are wise.  How so?  They both schedule a sweet in-between meal in the late afternoon.  The Brits call it "tea," the Germans "Kaffee und Kuchen" (coffee and cake).  So actually it's a sugar-and-caffeine rescue fix.  I became aware of the wisdom of it by way of the energy sag and accompanying craving for sweets (scone!  muffin!  fruitcake!  Frappucino!) that often afflicts me in the late afternoon. 

There must be a widespread blood-sugar low around four or five P.M., whether it has to do with time elapsed since lunch, or with the winding-down of a long workday, or with waning light and circadian rhythms.  Doesn't matter whether you work with your muscles or your brain:  this is the time of day when you run out of gas.  Especially in winter.

I have a hunch that this well-timed indulgence has something to do with the rarity of obesity in European countries.  I don't know about Brits (whose food genius begins with tea and ends immediately thereafter), but Germans eat a fairly robust breakfast and have "dinner" in the middle of the day, coffee and cake in the late afternoon, and then "Abendbrot" -- evening bread, a modest supper such as a slice of pumpernickel with cheese and an apple -- at night.  They may get naturally stout in middle age, but you almost never see young people who are overweight, and from our point of view they eat like horses.  Maybe the five o'clock indulgence so satisfies a real fuel need that there's no pent-up craving to binge at the refrigerator at midnight. 

Worth a try?  The Teatime Diet?

POSTSCRIPT:  Then again, the Germans are so terrifyingly orderly -- or used to be -- that on the whole, I'd rather be obese.  They always ate at precisely the same time, and for midday dinner you always had to have a neat array of meat, potatoes, a vegetable, a roll, and dessert.  A cousin of J's visited us once who had lived for years in Germany; we took her to Florida, where we visited some U-Pic fields.  She told us later that to her it was the wildest, craziest, most deliciously transgressive anarchy that we could have a whole meal made up of nothing but as many ears of Silver Queen corn as you could eat, and that you could go to the refrigerator any time you wanted and get a tomato.  Ah, the land of the free.

Comments

[Ruth Anne]

And the home of the brawny.

[Melinda]

When my doctor sent me to a nutritionist last Spring to get my weight, blood sugar and cholesterol under control, the first thing the nutritionist told me to do was have a snack mid-morning and mid-afternoon.

Not only does it keep my blood sugar and energy steady, but I have less of an urge to run back and forth to the refrigerator, office pantry, "leftover meeting food on the credenza," etc.

I've lost 20 pounds so far, and the last blood test I had around Labor Day showed normal numbers.

[Tom Strong]

M. and I have tea-time almost every day. Can't say it's helped us lose weight, but we haven't really gained any either.

[amba]

OK, c'mon . . . vicarious thrills: what do you have? You're a baker, do you still have time for that?

[Tom Strong]

It depends. Lately we've been really into this Indian snack that translates loosely as "crunch-munch." It's basically a mix of puffed rice, peanuts, dried fruit, and spices. Simple to make, and goes really well with chai (which I'm totally addicted to).

And I'm unemployed (sort of) right now, so I still bake plenty, though not often for tea. I kind of overworked (and overate) during Thanksgiving, though, so I'm taking a couple weeks off.

[amba]

Indian trail mix. It sounds good to me; nuts and dried fruits are usually what I crave, even if embedded in a muffin or a chocolate bar. That of course is Jewish too: "rozhinkes mit mandeln."

[sail on]

The Mexicans follow this dietary wisdom too (or did, before they got corrupted by the Wall Street Type A syndrome of career and long workdays above all else).

A I recall from 2-3 decades ago: Pan dulce (a variety of delicious, fresh baked goods) with dark coffee or hot chocolate & maybe a scrambled egg with tortilla on the side - an hour or two after rising, and some 30-60 minutes into some yard work, cleaning or sewing, etc.

Dinner at 2-3 p.m. - the main meal of the day, always including tortillas & beans, maybe a bit of meat or fish, veggies; a snack at 6 p.m. (lightest bite of the day) & an evening bit of bread & cheese, fruit or the like, and/or more tortillas, at 8-9 p.m.

Bedtime around 10:30-midnight, satisfied but not over-full. Seems in retrospect like the intuitive recipe for steady blood sugar & nutrients throughout the waking cycle.

[sara monroe]

hey! someone just did a study where they compared afternoon performance on mental and physical tasks after a) caffeine pill b) placebo pill c) nap. The nap won

[Lynne]

Is it just me, or does "Four o'Clock Sugar" sound like the name of an old BeBop tune from the Big Band Era? Doesn't it just sing "Duke Ellington"?

Ok. It's just me. Again.

[amba]

If it wasn't, it should have been! This may have been a subliminal influence on my title-choosing.

One O'Clock Jump -- Count Basie.