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Eating
together for better health
July 14, 05
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
Why
are Fourth of July cookouts so much fun?
Think about it. It’s not just the food.
For most of us, the joy in traditions like Fourth of July
cookouts is in the ritual of gathering family and friends
to prepare and eat a meal together.
One of the keys to the pleasure is that the celebration often
is set to the time scale of the food preparation. Everyone
is relaxed, and while a few are fixing the food, the others
are close by for company.
We seldom spend that kind of time on meals these days.
Meals today are often eaten on the run, taken in shifts with
family members eating at different times from one another,
and composed of processed, packaged foods that require little
more than heating to prepare.
Food writer Michael Pollan touched on this in an October 2004
essay in The New York Times Magazine in which he described
what he calls “our national eating disorder.”
Pollan argued that although Americans are more anxious and
food-obsessed than people in other nations, we’re less
healthy than many of our neighbors around the world who spend
less time worrying about what they eat.
“Compared with the French,” he said, “we’re
much more likely to choose foods for reasons of health, and
yet the French, more apt to choose on the basis of pleasure,
are the healthier (and thinner) people.”
The French, Pollan pointed out, eat smaller portions, take
seconds less often, seldom eat alone, and spend more time
preparing and enjoying their meals.
In contrast, we tend to choose more processed, vitamin-fortified
junk, eat more of it, and spend less time preparing and eating
our meals.
This eating style and our habit of succumbing to food fads
such as the recent wave of carbophobia have a cost, said Pollan.
He said, “Getting us to change how we eat over and over
again tends to undermine the various social structures that
surround (and steady) our eating habits: things like the family
dinner and taboos on snacking between meals or eating alone.”
“A well-developed culture of eating, such as you find
in France or Italy,” he said, “mediates the eater’s
relationship to food, moderating consumption even as it prolongs
and deepens the pleasure of eating.”
We all could likely benefit from taking a more relaxed and
social approach to eating wholesome foods. The place to begin
is at home:
* Spend more time fixing meals. Given the frantic pace of
most households, a practical approach may be to aim for taking
extra time to fix a meal from scratch once or twice a week.
Keep it simple by choosing meals that require few ingredients
and little dependence on recipes. Toss a salad and cook some
fresh vegetables.
* Ritualize it. Set the table, include everyone and designate
a regular time for dinner.
* Prepare the setting. Make mealtime as pleasant as possible
by turning off the TV, adding some soft music and setting
out a candle or fresh flowers.
* Protect the time. If evening is the best time for a meal,
make it a priority and don’t let other activities interfere.
I was struck recently when, in talking with some new neighbors,
I learned they had decided against registering their kids
for swimming lessons because the lessons would have interfered
with dinnertime.
It’s easier said than done, but we all may benefit by
making meals a family or social affair. The rewards may be
health and happiness.
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