Turning Meal Time into Family Time

Some of our best memories from childhood usually center on food: turkey and sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, special treats and family traditions on holidays, birthday cake and ice cream, and perhaps a family ritual of dining out at a favorite restaurant. What happens when we subtract the cultural meaning from food, and take away the wonderful gift of having time to eat together with friends and family? Besides a loss of culture and social bonding, a whole host of problems can ensue, from poor nutrition and overeating to inappropriate dieting and eating disorders in teenagers.

Mealtime has been central to human culture ever since humans came into existence as a species. Early fire pits surrounded by bones or piles of shells show that even before Homo sapiens became Homo sapiens, we ate together. But an abrupt and disturbing cultural shift has taken place over the past 20 to 30 years that is contributing to the epidemic of overweight and obesity in our society. Unfortunately, our modern Western culture focuses primarily on the individual's responsibility to make healthier choices rather than addressing the broader cultural issues. We place undue burden and expectations on individuals, asking them to change when their cultural environment has not. Adults in our society must take collective responsibility for allowing this cultural disintegration, and work to create new, healthier cultural patterns that encourage healthy individual behavior.

The Separation of Families

In the modern working world, children are separated from parents and important adults in their lives for up to twelve hours a day, five or six days a week. Children may spend their childhood, up until they graduate from high school or even college, primarily in the company of their peers, with adult supervision that changes often enough to prevent most long-term bonding. Yet in no other society has such a disjunction been allowed. Even in our own country, until roughly 100 years ago, 80 percent of American families lived on farms, working together much of the time, eating every meal together as a family, and often as an extended family.

When factory work became more common, it certainly took families away from home, but family members (including teenagers) often worked at the same factories, allowing some continued sharing of meals and schedules. It is only in the most recent generation that complete separation of family members from each other and from eating home-prepared meals together has become the norm.

Eating alone or with peers away from home has also resulted in a thriving fast food industry, another major contributor to obesity in our consumer culture. While the fast food industry started having an influence as far back as the introduction of the automobile to American families, the frequency and number of people eating in fast food "restaurants" has risen dramatically in the past 20 to 30 years. Our long working hours, commute times, and time spent shopping drastically reduce the time we have to spend on food preparation. And we have infected other cultures and nations with our fast food obsession. Around the world, McDonald's golden arches are more widely recognized than the Christian cross (Schlosser, Fast Food Nation).

Of course, some families eat together at fast food restaurants, and the fast food companies capitalize on these patterns for advertising purposes. But eating at a fast food restaurant together still separates the family from their home, from homemade food that has deep cultural meaning, and from the centrality of food preparation in our traditional cultures. We have little sense of where the food in a fast food restaurant came from, or how it was prepared; instead, the fast food itself has become a cultural icon, replacing more meaningful ones that emphasized distinctive cultural traditions. According to Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, by 2001, 25% of the meals eaten in the United States were "fast food."

Not only is fast food unhealthy in terms of nutrition and calorie content, it also induces negative cultural patterns in our society. Out of 100 nutritionists sampled nationwide, 45 agreed that people should never eat fast food and 95 agreed that fast food is a major contributor to obesity.

Soda pop deserves its own book. With approximately 10 teaspoons of sugar per can, and some teenage boys consuming as many as 5 cans per day, the soda industry could be partly responsible for hyperactive and disruptive behavior in schools, poor learning habits, and of course weight problems. Some types of soda have also been shown to inhibit calcium uptake, posing additional problems for girls who may wind up with osteoporosis.

Even when fast food companies try to introduce healthier choices, including salad and fruit dishes, portion sizes have remained large. Years ago, a marketer for movie theaters discovered that people will pay more for and buy more food offered in larger portions. McDonald's used this strategy to offer larger portions to its customers, and Burger King, Wendy's, and other fast food companies followed suit. American consumers then consumed more food and calories per meal, and began gaining weight. As we now know, being overweight or obese leads to a host of serious health problems, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure, among others.

What Can Parents Do?

These grim statistics do not mean our children are doomed, but they do suggest we need to take action now. We must take a look at the collective culture we are passing on to the next generation. As parents and responsible adults, we need to examine both the quantity and quality of the time we spend with our children, particularly at meal times. 

Examine your work schedule. If you are not able to sit down with your children for one or two meals per day, you may want to consider changing your work schedule. You can talk to your boss about flextime options, change jobs or reduce work hours, or try to adjust your children's school schedules to fit your work schedule. These changes may seem drastic, but they can help your child live a longer, healthier life. Obese adults die on average 10 years earlier than adults in the normal weight range. Obese children often experience teasing and depression because of their unhappiness about their weight.

Evaluate your family's eating habits. If you are relying on fast food restaurants or microwave dinners to feed your family, it may be time to make some changes. Oatmeal and fruit are as inexpensive and quick to prepare as driving to McDonald's. Whole grain breads and sandwich fixings, plus fruits and sliced vegetables, make quick lunches that can travel. For the same price as a microwave dinner, you or your teenager can cook a well-rounded meal of potatoes, vegetables, and chicken. With a small investment in reusable containers, you can prepare double recipes and use leftovers creatively on nights when no one has time to cook. These healthy foods, when you eat together with your children, give them the triple benefit of nutritious food, learning good eating habits, and spending time with the most important people in their lives.

Make family meals a priority. Does your child have time to eat a hot breakfast? Does he get home in time for dinner? Or does he rely on sugary cereals, pizza, soft drinks, and snacks from vending machines to get through the day? Talk to your children about making a few changes that will help them slow down and eat better foods. Let your teen continue at least one activity that is most important to him, but less important activities can be rescheduled to allow the whole family to eat together. Share with your children the positive changes you're making in your own life and ask everyone to make family meals a priority.

Get involved at school. If your children eat school lunches or breakfasts, it is time to become a "good food" activist at their schools. Farm-to-school programs are taking off at schools across the country, providing fresh local farm food as a regular part of school lunch programs. If you become part of the school's parent-teacher association or site council, you will have a voice in making sure your child's school offers healthy meals and gets rid of any vending machines that offer junk food.

Pass on a tradition of good health. Mealtime plays an important cultural role in our lives. Don't wait for the holidays to cook foods that have special cultural or family meaning. Research your own family and cultural history by talking to your family's "elders" and learning new recipes that you can pass on through the generations. Let meaningful food traditions that emphasize family and community replace the hollow modern culture of fast food.

Catherine Knott, Ph.D., is a professor of Anthropology at the University of Alaska (Homer). She is an educator specializing in education, community, environment, and agriculture. She received her Bachelors degree from Yale University and her Ph.D. from Cornell University.