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The Family Meal, Part One: If Kids Can Zap, Squeeze, or Drink Their Own Meal, What’s The Point of The Family Dinner?
Technology advances at lightning speed, sometimes spinning us around like tops in the process—where are we when we stop moving? The pace both delights us and leaves us a bit dazed and confused. Take food, for example. If you were to wander the aisles of the Institute for Food Technology’s annual Food Expo, you would see the latest examples of the wonders of food science developed to please the ever-sophisticated consumer. One trick is to take a natural food ingredient and add it to some other food, creating new “functional foods.”
Calcium in our orange juice or omega-3 fatty acids in eggs have become mainstream; Europe is seeing milk (whey) proteins added to beverages to help reduce blood pressure; functional foods are a wave of the future. New flavoring trends at the 2004 Expo included natural seafood flavor (for example, cod) and roasted chicken skin flavor. Hundreds of chemical additives abound to help processed food look, smell, taste and hold together better. And then comes the packaging.
While consumers want food packaged in individual portions to help control calories, another reason is to make meals more portable, with an emphasis on food that can be munched on-the-go in cars, whether in a bottle, in re-sealable cups, or in squirt tubes. Tom Biddie, director of packaging and development for Kraft Foods, stated that this is a huge growth area in the United States. Why? "The traditional family cycle of meals is being replaced by blurred eating sessions and snacking throughout the day." (See the complete media release at: www.ift.org/cms/?pid=1001057&printable=1) The media both shape and reflect this reality through advertising. By now you’ve surely seen the new fast food ads that tell us that the way we eat now is alone but smiling, on wheels, far from a table, plugged into an earpiece and moving fast, usually surrounded by a lot of other attractive young people doing the same thing. (The issue of how food is marketed to children is a whole story on its own, saved for another column...)
Is this a good development? According to the Institute of Food Technology’s 10 Top Trends of 2005, this year the fashionable eater wants everything from exotic fruits to locally raised gourmet cheeses. The old stand-bys of low-fat foods are back in demand (the Atkins craze is petering out). But 4 of the top 10 trends involve convenience. America’s vending machines get 100 million hits per day, for example. Along with wanting more interesting (and healthy) items in those machines, consumers are demanding more take-out at full service restaurants, ready-to-eat products in the supermarket, and quick-fix items for home cooking. So, the big questions: if we’re wanting to get our food more quickly, does that mean we’re taking the time we’ve saved in food preparation to linger around the family meal table? Are we making the effort to get the lightning-speed food on the table and call it a meal? Is the family meal out there anymore? Or has it become obsolete, as old-fashioned as pretzels with oat bran?
For the purpose of this article, think of the family meal as a time when everyone—or most everyone, at least one adult with present children—sits down together at an appointed time to eat, preferably at a table without entertainment radiating from a nearby screen. Notice I didn’t say that the family meal should consist of roast chicken, baked potatoes, garden green beans, fresh fruit, whole grain rolls, and so forth—someone’s idea of a “perfect” meal. I’m talking first and foremost about whether people are sitting down together and talking to one another, even if it’s with mac-n-cheese and root beer: the socialization is more important than the food (and, remember, I’m a dietitian!). As children get older, the family meal tends to fall apart. Fifty-five percent of 12 year-olds but fewer than 26 % of 17-year olds eat with their family every night of the week, according to the recently released 2005 CASA report: The Importance of Family Dinners II.
Should we care that the family meal has disappeared? In one word, “yes!” No matter how fast technology pushes us along, no matter how much better our kids are than we in programming the DVD player or a cell phone, children still move through developmental phases at the same rate that our ancient ancestors did—nature cannot be hurried along. There are tremendous developmental, emotional and social skills and benefits acquired through the repetition over years of taking time out to sit with the family—whoever its members—to eat a meal together. This cannot be replaced with snazzy packaging.
What are the barriers to the family meal today? The obvious ones: more homes with two working parents, more single parent homes, longer work days, often because of longer commutes. Extracurricular activities for kids—and adults, too--may be scheduled through the dinner hour. We spend a lot of time absolutely exhausted running from one activity to the next. Our family time is not protected.
What about skills? Today’s younger parents are the first generation to have grown up possibly never having learned to cook—anything--or ever having had family meals. Food may have been heated or reconstituted (i.e., ramen noodles), or simply purchased. A college student of mine reported that after reaching high school age, family supper was $5 on the table for take out. Another trend I’ve seen with dieting college students is consuming low-cal frozen meals for supper—every night. It used to be that most girls took home ec and so somebody was learning cooking skills (sad for girls who wanted to repair engines or boys who lusted after lasagna). But “home ec” today has become “life skills” and includes more topics, at least in our local schools. Not much cooking takes place for either gender.
Then there are more subtle issues. Families not used to sitting down to eat together may find it difficult to begin, especially if kids are used to getting what they want for food. The thought of one meal for all may seem limiting. In a Central Michigan University study of rural families with preschoolers, over 40% of the meal preparers felt that the picky eating of their children was an impediment to getting meals on the table. Kids don’t know how to behave at the table so parents don’t want to face the unpleasantness of arguing with their children—easier to get whatever you like to eat and sit peacefully in front of the T.V. For low-income families, if children don’t have good food acceptance skills, putting unfamiliar, and thus, perhaps, unpopular food in front of a child may feel like too expensive an experiment. Many of today’s parents grew up with the single menu “clean plate” club, which felt awful. (How many people do you know who love vegetables because they were forced to eat them?) These parents may have veered off in the other direction: rather than force kids to eat what’s prepared, they don’t prepare anything without asking first, “what do you want?” Other conflicted parents might be those who have had serious issues with dieting and eating disorders. Feeding their children may be an enormous struggle.
Perhaps, most of all, it is about being tired. It is a good deal of work to get a meal on the table consistently, night after night. It needs to be a priority. Those convenience foods mentioned earlier can be helpful. We don’t want to wait until we’re having fewer than 3 meals together a week as a family: 92% of parents in this situation want more frequent family dinners, as do 52% of teenagers, according to CASA. We can begin to cultivate the practice when our kids are preschoolers and hang onto it for dear life.
Coming Soon:
Column 6-2: The Family Meal: Research Supports the Benefits
Column 6-3: The Family Meal: Satter’s Division of Responsibility
Column 6-4: The Family Meal: Logistics of Meal Success
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