Your dinner time shows whether you are a true American

You probably eat dinner around the same time each night and there's probably a reason for it.

It might start during the first commercial break of the 5:30 p.m. episode of "Shark Tank." It might be 30 minutes after you arrive home from work. It might be 12 hours after you got out of bed to start your day. It might be when the microwave finally finishes cooking those Hot Pockets you put in a 6 p.m.

It's probably not that exact, but most of us have a general dinner time. Now have data that determines whether we are normal or some sort of freak who should close our curtains so we don't scare the neighbors with our peculiar dinner time. 

A guy named Nathan Yau has a fascinating blog called FlowingData, where he charts various statistics in interesting ways (home run distance in different ballparks, what Americans drink, how smoke from Canadian wildfires travels across the U.S.). Recently, he used data from the American Time Use Survey (who knew there was such a thing?) to track when we eat dinner.

Broadly, data showed that most American households eat dinner between 5:07 p.m. and 8:19 p.m. Oh, sure, that's pretty general. But want specifics?

According to Yau, the peak time – the period at which the highest number of households are eating dinner – is 6:19 p.m.

That's right. If you're eating dinner at 6:19 p.m., you're a normal American. And by "normal American," I mean a Californian since that's the peak time in the Golden State. We're the only state whose peak time coincides with the national peak, again proving that we're the most American of Americans, something made clear by the fact that we have Hollywood and Disneyland and Bakersfield.

Californians are normal, eating at a reasonable time (presuming dinner time is around 20 minutes, that means our start time is from 5:59 to 6:19 p.m.). Other states are pretty close to the median: Of the 50 states, 41 hit peak dinner time within 20 minutes of the golden (state) time of 6:19 p.m. The other nine, plus the District of Columbia? Early and late-eating freaks – but I think I know why, although I'm too lazy to do the research.

First, the two states that are really early. 

In Pennsylvania, peak dinner time is 5:37 p.m., which is presumably attributable to the large Amish population not using electricity and having to feed their oxen at 6 p.m. (those are guesses. I don't know how many Amish actually live in Pennsylvania, I'm not sure whether they own oxen nor whether they use electricity).

The other early state is Maine, where people have peak dinner time at 5:40 p.m. That's attributable to the sun going down at 12:30 p.m. every day from Halloween until April 1 (that may not be accurate either).

People in four states, plus the District of Columbia, eat at 7 p.m. or later. Again, there are reasons that they're such freaks.

The latest-eating residents are those in D.C. because they all work for the federal government and presumably have to meet lobbyists for dinner. Lobbyists are allegedly late eaters.

The four states where peak dinner time is 7 p.m. or later are Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Texas – states that are connected.

You may not find this in "history" books, but I've heard that when the South surrendered after the Civil War, they agreed to wait until Northerners were done eating dinner before they started.

It seems weird now, but in 1865, it made sense. Trust me: I eat dinner at 6:19 p.m. every night. All Americans who eat at dramatically different times have excuses, albeit strange ones.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.