SnapChart: Why Italy love a good Instagram lunch

At Pulsar, discovering behavioural insights is part of our daily work. So far, we've shared insight on when people book their holidays, what car brands are the most discussed, and who's driving conversation around PAD.

With Italy being famed for its food (and food culture), we decided to see if this was reflected in how Italians talk about and share their meals on social media. It turns out that there is an interesting platform split: looking on Facebook, we can see that Italians love to talk about dinner.

We compared the volume of conversations for each meal time and saw that 47% of food chat on Facebook is focused on dinner time. Mentions of dinner gains traction at around 4pm every day, eventually dying off at 10pm.

The other thing we noticed was that dinner is very much a social event, one which is about having good company and eating together. With dinner being the main meal of the day, sharing habits reflect consumption habits: this suggests that dinner is a planned event, which sees Italians discussing their dinner plans and asking for friends' opinions & recipes online.

Lunch, on the other hand, is a completely different story:

Italians may talk mostly about dinner, but less so about lunch. Lunch turns out to be a visually-led meal time, a perfect opportunity to share images on Instagram.

Lunch, for Italians, is about having good food. Does an extended lunch break culture affect what people eat and how they share meals on social? An image-led focus suggests that lunch is for eating out, going to restaurants and enjoying an extended break where possible.

Breakfast is the least talked about and photographed meal, but that doesn't mean it's less important. For Italians, breakfast is about being good to yourself, enjoying rich coffee and light food. Now that's something to live by...

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