Breakfast has been colonised by brunch, lunch has been reduced to a meeting held over a bowl, and dinner is an increasingly complex negotiation between schedules, diets and delivery apps. The 3 p.m. snack remains what meals used to be: personal, private, and entirely without obligation.
The snack asks nothing of you. It does not require a reservation, a companion, a justification or a photograph. It is the only meal of the day that can be eaten standing in a kitchen, in a stairwell, or while walking, with total dignity.
The snack is the last meal that answers only to appetite.
The argument is simple. We have made every other meal carry the weight of culture, economics and identity. The snack has no such burden — which is exactly why, at three in the afternoon, it is the most civilised thing you can do.