Think back to dinner last night. Last year. Ten years ago. When you were in college. When you were a kid. The further you go back into that blurry montage of faddy kitchen designs and bad hairstyles, the less you probably recall about what exactly was on your plate. Sure, there was that brief but thrilling fascination with fondue, but if you're like me, the food itself is an impressionistic smorgasbord compared with the real memories—setting the table with paper napkins and armfuls of salad-dressing bottles, balancing precariously on the hind legs of your chair, Dad's corny jokes—which are as easy to recall today as what you ate for lunch two hours ago.
The point is: Psychologically, we aren't so much what we eat as how we eat it. And that trusty meal, as much as we griped about it then and stress about it now, paints an intimate portrait of our families and of us as individuals. So it wasn't too surprising when experts studying obesity, depression, drug abuse—you name it—recently started shining a spotlight on shared meals as a valuable insurance policy for our kids. According to an 11-year survey conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), teens who eat with their families at least five times a week are less likely to do drugs, drink, and smoke cigarettes than those who share meals less frequently. They're also more confident, less stressed-out, more likely to get As and Bs, and more inclined to confide in their parents. They eat better, too. Another study shows that family-dinner devotees consume more fruit and vegetables and less soda and trans-fatty food, both at home and outside it. They even have a better vocabulary.
The Logistical Challenge
Okay, okay—we get it. But the sad reality is that 8 out of 10 American households find shared meals a logistical challenge, according to a 2004 study. Between parents who get home just an hour before toddlers' bedtimes, single-parent juggling acts, and kids whose after-school activities chew up the dinner hour, when are we supposed to eat, let alone cook? And all the studies lead to more questions: Do we really have to eat together every night? Starting when the kids are in diapers? Always at home? Does wolfing down pizza pockets in the minivan count?
Thank goodness for the clarity served up in The Surprising Power of Family Meals, by Miriam Weinstein, a documentarian and mother of two grown children in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. "I am not advocating a return to some Neverland of meatloaf and ruffled aprons," she writes. "If an institution is anywhere near as good as I'm saying supper is, it must be flexible, reflecting who we are at this time in our culture, in our lives."
