It appears that Polly Hudson at The Guardian is having a case of the vapors about when people eat dinner.

The world is burning, democracy is unraveling before our very eyes, and the cost of, well, everything, has hit the point that even a feudal lord would look askance upon, but sure, let’s all clutch our pearls because some twenty-somethings are booking restaurant tables at 6 PM instead of 8 PM. That’s the real crisis facing civilization today. That’s the kind of thing that the Guardian should be paying the writer of op-eds like “Beards may be dirtier than toilets – but all men should grow one” and “The best possible wedding gift? Leaving the reception without saying goodbye,” a person that has a Substack¹You know, the Nazi Email Newsletter platform with a whopping 90 followers, to write.

The privilege, the sheer unmitigated wank of the whole thing is stunning.

So, of course, I’m going to chime in.

The Great Dinner Time Scandal of 2025

Swiping from Hudson’s own piece here: according to recent data from OpenTable, there’s been an 11% increase in 6pm bookings in London and a 6% rise nationally during early evening slots, while traditional 8 pm sittings declined by 3% across the country. The UK’s average dining time has shifted to 6.12pm and nearly half of all reservations now fall between midday and 6 PM.

What is it in the US? I don’t know. I’m not going to bother to do the research. Nobody’s paying me to write this. However, in Great Britain, this is worth having strong opinions about. Opinions that get you paid by a respected²Let’s just pretend, okay? icon of journalism.

I’m going to say it: I don’t care when you eat dinner. You like eating 5 PM while living that retirement home lifestyle? Great. You think 11pm is a good time for paella because you had a nice time in Barcelona six summers ago? Brilliant.

Hell, eat breakfast for dinner³A truly great thing, we all agree and dinner for breakfast⁴We’ve all done the cold pizza thing. It’s okay. if that’s what makes you happy. I promise it affects the rest of the planet not at all.

The Audacity of Having a Schedule

What really gets me about this Polly’s⁵Yes, I’m going to use her first name. 350-word missive is the barely concealed contempt for people who dare to organize their lives around their own priorities rather than some imaginary cultural standard. Industry observers attribute the shift to younger diners valuing health, well-being and better sleep, together with flexible hybrid working.

Oh no! Young people are prioritizing their health and sleep! What fucking monsters they must be!

You want to know what’s actually happening here? People figured out that eating earlier makes them feel better. Scientists think so. From a longevity perspective, Valter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, previously told GQ there’s no set hour to stop eating – it’s more to do with when your bedtime is. If you go to bed at 10 PM, you should probably stop eating by 7 PM to avoid disrupting your sleep.

Longo is truly a next-level thinker. Who could have predicted that aligning your eating schedule with your sleep schedule might be beneficial?⁶This is where I go off about the old movie/TV trope where the (apparently underfed) dad has a big sandwich and a glass of milk right before going to bed. What’s the deal with that, anyway?

(For the record, my wife and I eat dinner around 6 PM. The reason for that? She gets up around 5:30 every morning during the school year and we like to spend our evenings together watching shows involving murder, starships, or starship murders.)

The Horror of Practical Decision-Making

But here’s what really seems to bother the dinner time scolds: Gen Z had the gall to look at the what passed for a “traditional” dining schedule and say, “You know what? This doesn’t work for us.” They didn’t ask permission. They didn’t form a committee to study the implications of their actions. They just… changed their behavior based on what made sense for their lives.

And that, apparently, is unforgivable.

I’ve been watching this same pattern play out for decades now. Every time a younger generation decides to do something differently – whether it’s buying fewer houses (because they’re prohibitively expensive), having fewer kids (because the world is terrifying), or eating dinner earlier (because it makes them feel better) – there’s immediately a chorus of voices ready to explain why this is actually a moral failing rather than a rational response to circumstances.

It happened with Gen X (my team), it happened with Millennials (you all remember Avocado Toast Guy), and now it’s happening over this very small, very stupid thing.

And the worst thing is, again, that people are getting paid to be mad about this.

The Tyranny of Arbitrary Social Norms

Here’s the thing about social norms: outside of things related to crime and hygiene, they’re all completely arbitrary. There’s nothing inherently superior about eating dinner at 8 PM versus 6 PM. It’s not more sophisticated, more cultured, or more adult. It’s just different. And different isn’t necessarily bad, despite what the UK’s watchdogs of proper dinner timing might tell you.

You know what is bad? Spending your finite time on this planet worrying about when other people are consuming their evening meal. You know what’s worse? Writing 350 words about how other people’s dinner schedules inconvenience you so much that they must represent some kind of cultural decline and then cashing a check for your lazy, pissy take.

If you want to eat dinner at 9 PM, knock yourself out. If that’s when your schedule works, when your family can get together, when your favorite restaurant has the best atmosphere – great! Go for it. Live your life.

But don’t pretend that your timing preference is in any way superior to someone else’s. C’mon.

The Real Story Here

What’s actually interesting about this dinner time shift isn’t why it’s happening. It’s the fact that restaurants are evolving menus, service models and staffing patterns in response to a growing demand for early evening meals for people beyond seniors looking for early bird specials.

You know what that is? That’s businesses responding to consumer demand. That’s restaurant owners and management adapting to serve their customers better. That’s the marketplace working exactly as it’s supposed to work, without any grand cultural statements or generational warfare required.

But apparently, we can’t just let businesses serve customers when they want to be served. No, we have to turn it into a 350 words of whining about an entire generation.

The Final Course

I get that change can be unsettling. I understand that when you’re used to one way of doing things, seeing people do them differently can feel threatening or wrong. But here’s the thing: feeling that way doesn’t mean you’re right. It just means you’re human.

The world changes. Generations make different choices. Social norms evolve. And sometimes⁷frustratingly, for some people, a lot of the time those changes are actually improvements. Sometimes people figure out better ways to do things, even if those ways don’t match what we’re used to.

So here’s my radical suggestion: instead of writing think pieces about how Gen Z’s dinner schedule represents the downfall of civilization, maybe we could just… let them eat dinner when they want to eat dinner. Maybe we could focus our cultural criticism on things that actually matter. Maybe we could save our outrage for problems that are actually worth solving.

Because I promise you, the future of human civilization does not hinge on whether we eat dinner at 6 PM or 8 PM. And anyone who thinks it does probably needs to get out more.

Or maybe they just need to eat dinner earlier. Or later? I don’t know. I don’t care.

(I did get about 1300 words out of it, though.)