Food for thought

‘‘The biggest travesty of this generation is that families do not dine together,’’ says Jean K Hopper, a noted American etiquette and protocol consultant, adding, ‘‘dining together not merely fosters good table manners but good social skills as well. There’s an awareness of the other that comes from sitting together.’’
Sitting together and having a family meal, generally the evening meal, curbs our natural savagery and animal greed.It cultivates the feeling of sharing and consideration for others. Indeed, table manners are one of the subtlest lines separating civility from barbarity.
Dinner rituals have little to do with the income or the social class of a family. It’s not important whether you sit at a big dining table or squat on the kitchen floor. Even the food you have hardly matters. What really counts is the grace with which food is served and accepted. It’s through the practice of family sitting at meals and observing the attendant convention that youngsters learn the art of human companionship, the culture of giving and receiving.
The ideal family meal calls for undistracted dining, not sitting in front of the TV. Research reveals that families who watch TV during dinner time tend to develop poor eating habits, putting kids at risk from obesity or malnutrition.
Eating is one of the most fundamental health-related behaviours we have. Once parents manage to separate and structure eating times, incorporating healthy food becomes much simpler. According to an eminent American social scientist, eating dinner together at home can curb teen drinking. With more Indian teenagers consuming alcohol at progressively younger years, the relevance of family meal further increases.
People, particularly teenagers, nibble snacks at odd hours or have their food as per convenience. This erodes the imperative of a regular, fixed-time, sit-down meal. Teenagers munching junk food slouched in front of TV or snacking at odd hours cooped up in their rooms, are not merely nutritionally deprived, but are furthermore deprived of the best element of the family life — the family meal. Many teenagers may not be sitting for a proper meal at home anymore. They are missing the primal rite of socialisation, the family meal.
For this, their parents are at fault. These parents, often both working, are generally too busy in their professional lives. Or, they prefer a simple, quiet meal. On the other hand, eating with youngsters entails enforcing a modicum of discipline and influencing individual behaviour, which involves some degree of time and attention. ‘‘The family that prays together stays together,’’ says Al Scalpone. It could well be said that the family that eats together stays together.