Spain and the south of France comes to mind as examples.

Personally, when i arrived in the usa 8 years ago i was surprised that people eat dinner at 5:00 pm. In India,where i am from this time was meant for some light snacks and coffee/tea. So you get some light food to fuel you till you have dinner much later.

It's more of a cultural thing and no single thing is good or bad.

Are these people without jobs that eat dinner at 5pm? Most people I know are still at work at 5pm.

Many people seem to snack in the office around 5.

I only remember a handful of times in my life where I ate dinner before 8pm. 20h30/21h is the usual time for dinner where I live.

For me even earlier; before I came to university it was around 19:30, and now that I'm here dinner is available from 17:00 to 19:30..

Seriously. Southern Europe is pretty thin - and Italy, Spain, Southern France all eat late.

Not in Northern Italy :)

I would like to know why the downvotes, my wife is from Milan and her family from a town near Bergamo and everybody I know have dinner between 19:00 and 19:30

My mom's side of the family is from Genova. They liked to eat a little later, but not absurdly late. I've spent a lot of time in Rome and Florence, not as much up north, and even in those places most restaurants don't open until 19:00 or 19:30, and the local traffic really picks up closer to 20:00.

In any case, I'm not downvoting you, but I will point out that 19:30 is late for dinner by US standards. Around here most folks are having dinner immediately after work. My wife, for instance, will usually have dinner on the table at 5:30PM on the dot. Too early for me, but we have a 4 year old! (I digress)