means A meal is an occasion of eating, especially a structured portion of food taken at a customary time like breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

from There are actually two old words tangled into one. The 'eating occasion' sense comes from Old English 'mǣl,' which first meant a measure or fixed point in time — a cousin of words for 'measure' and 'mark' across the Germanic family. So a meal was originally an appointed time, and only later the food you ate at it. The other 'meal' — the ground grain in oatmeal — is a separate Old English word 'melu,' related to 'mill' and 'mold' and the idea of grinding to dust. They look identical now, but they arrived by different roads.