It's a valuable practice for anyone who wants to experiment with it. This originated because in the days of the Buddha, when ascetics, wandering meditators and other spiritual practitioners would stay away from towns as much as possible so that they could be with nature and quiet, and wouldn't be bothered by the busyness of city life. So in order to get their meals, they would come to the village as early as possible. As soon as dawn was breaking they would walk out of the woods and go to the village when everything was quiet and not too busy to get their food. Then they would go back up into the hills.
That was traditionally how they ate, they would eat in the morning and that was it, no more food for the rest of the day and everything was simple. It made life easy for them. It also made it easy for the village people to take care of these wandering monks, as they only had to worry about it during the morning, the monks weren't coming around all day. So this practice of not eating after midday seemingly originated as a convenient factor, but it's got more benefits rather than just being convenient.
One of the biggest benefits is that if you don't eat after midday, your stomach does not bother you at night. Nighttime and early morning, as some of you might have noticed, are often favorite times for meditators. The world is more quiet. Before going to sleep and upon waking up in the morning are generally the times when people in the West meditate. Now if your stomach's not bothering you, then those evening and early morning meditations may go a little better than otherwise. As well, you wont get sleepy from over-eating. The normal lifestyle that many of you have in your average life is to have a big meal at night and often that causes lethargy, sloth and torpor to arise. So it has those sorts of benefits. To experiment with this in retreat is very valuable. The evening meal is a small meal anyhow. So just have a bigger meal for breakfast and lunch. Skip the afternoon meal if you wish.