What are the food and eating habits in Italy?

As you may know, food is extremely important for Italians, and much Italian culture is attached to food and eating. You will notice this if you visit any city in Italy: cafés, restaurants, pizzerias, food festivals, the delicious smell of cooking coming from an open window… Of course, everyone has heard of pizza, pasta and cappuccino, but how about meal times, or what to have for each meal?

Italians usually have three main meals during the day: la colazione, il pranzo e la cena.

For breakfast, Italians usually have cereal (cereali), toast with jam (pane tostato con la marmellata) or a kind of rusk called fette biscottate. They usually accompany the food with coffee (caffè), milk (latte) or fruit juice (succo di frutta).

Lunch and dinner can vary: some people like to have only one course, while others like to have more than one. Pasta or rice-based dishes are called primi piatti, or simply primi (“first courses”). Meat or fish-based dishes are considered secondi piatti, or simply secondi (“second courses”). Secondi piatti usually come with sides (contorni). On a restaurant menu you will see antipasti (starters), primi, secondi, contorni e dolci (desserts). Pizza is usually considered a main dish (piatto unico). Italians usually have lunch sometime between 12:00 and 2:00pm and dinner between 7:00pm and 9:00pm, although meal times vary between north and south, with the north eating slightly earlier than the south.

As well as the three main meals, Italians sometimes have a mid-morning snack (spuntino) and children usually have a snack  mid-afternoon (merenda), which can be sweet or savoury. Moreover, adults often have an aperitivo before dinner, consisting of a cold drink and crips (patatine) or savoury snacks (salatini) such as mini-pizzas (pizzette) to share.