Well, depends. For the first million years it was the norm. In a sense we're designed for it. Modern city-dwellers are all soft and weak and think they have to eat three times a day. But there's absolutely no biological reason its necessary.
That's just not true. If you are talking about hunter-gatherer societies, you'd be surprised to find out they didn't starve themselves regularly. They ate well and worked fewer hours than us, with a surprisingly high life expectancy.
"According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well."
"Sackett found that adults in foraging and horticultural societies work, on average, about 6.5 hours a day, where as people in agricultural and industrial societies work on average 8.8 hours a day.[26]"
