Why Is Dessert the Last Meal of the Day?

Normally when I write a blog post at the Decision Tree, I have an argument I want to make. Not so today. I have a question I want to ask.

Why is dessert last? Why not first thing in the morning??

We eat various foods throughout the day and we have numerous traditions about food, many of which go back thousands of years. But in American culture, one very strong tradition is that dessert, the sweetest portion of our food consumption, is the final thing eaten in the day.

There's no reason this should be the case instead of the other way around.

And I won't be satisfied with historical reasons. Every generation changes food habits from the last one; I assume that dessert-last has stuck around for a good reason. Also, I don't care about the other cultures that eat food in a different order (Japan?) — our system is stable in this culture and that needs explaining.

It's a puzzle because models of human decision-making about how rewards are distributed in time emphasize our fundamental impatience. We want our rewards as soon as possible. Given a salad, an entree, and some chocolate cake, ALL standard economic models predict you will eat the cake first, then the entree, and the salad last.

These models emphasize risk: surely if we are eating food in the wild, we should eat the calorically most dense foods first, in case they are stolen by others. And that's exactly what my dog does. He does not seem to know the word 'savor' at all. But not us.

Yes, there are some lone-cry-in-the-wilderness types that point out the exceptions to the impatience rule. They reminds us that most workers would prefer their salary start low and increase 3% per year rather than start high and then decrease. Most people, if given a coupon for a free meal from McDonalds and another one for Fancy French Place, will do McDonalds this weekend and Fancy French place later on. These preferences and others violate economic models.

The advantage of these alternative models is that they also predict another phenomenon: we eat salad (the least rewarding course) first.

But the disadvantage with these opposite-direction models is that they don't tell us why we prefer to delay gratification with our meals and our salaries, but in other situations, we refuse to save the best for last. They are just ad-hoc, and that makes them just a restatement of the phenomenon.

Another possibility is loss of self-control. Most people are familiar with the phenomenon of people who smoke when they drink (if only by observation). Somehow the physical rewardingness of drinking reduces self-control for smoking, lowering the threshold. Maybe food works the same way - a good meal makes you less able to resist dessert. That would be consistent with the fact that restaurants take your drink and salad and entree order all at once, but then wait until you have eaten to ask for your dessert order.

That's it for my theorizing. Google is not helpful here. Dessert first just feels wrong. But I can't put my finger on why. I think if I could get a purchase on this, it could be beneficial to humanity. If we can figure out how to make people crave celery instead of creme brulee after dinner, we could start to put a dent in this obesity crisis.