Why Cook at Home?
By Janet Peterson
Families, no matter their size or make-up, must be fed daily. Because dinner comes around every twenty-four hours, it provides a wonderful opportunity to strengthen families in the privacy of their own homes.
Going out to dinner together on occasion can also provide pleasurable and bonding experiences for families, but does not successfully replace what can take place in the family kitchen or dining room. Art Smith, author of Back to the Table: The Reunion of Food and Family, recalled, “As a child growing up in rural Florida, I learned the importance of the family table. It was there that I felt love matched only by my family's appreciation for fresh, wholesome food, a love of good cooking, and a fellowship just not possible at a restaurant table or the drive-in window of a fast-food outlet.” [1]
Yet sitting down to a home-cooked dinner as a family around its own table is an often overlooked and underused tool for providing emotional nurturing, developing a sense of belonging, and strengthening relationships. Indeed, the cumulative effects are compelling reasons to make dinner a family event.
“Families who chow together bond better than those who eat at separate times and spaces,” wrote Charlotte Latvala in Parenting magazine. “Sitting around the table — or even just grating carrots in the kitchen — encourages kids and parents to relax and share what's on their mind.” [2]
Today's fast-paced and over-programmed lives can exact a high toll on any family's happiness, security, and closeness. With so many distractions and obligations outside the home as well as mounting social challenges, a wise family will understand the purpose and benefits of eating together. Sharing dinner together regularly provides more than good nutrition; it enables family members to share their days with each other, relax, laugh, discuss issues, socialize, express love, and fortify family relationships.
“If we abandon our consistent family mealtime, we lose a forum in which family members can express their crazy ideas, their dreams, their frustrations, their fears, and their pleasures,” wrote Mimi Wilson and Mary Beth Lagerborg in their cookbook Table Talk: Activities and Recipes for Bringing the Family Together . “We lose a sounding board for opinions... We lose the base from which most family traditions are built, and our children lose a chance to grow in self-esteem and life skills and to learn good manners in a nonthreatening setting.” [3]
Sense of Belonging
Basic human needs do not change even though life in the 21 st century, with all its innovations, technology and affluence, is much different than in previous eras. Nevertheless, people still need to feel a sense of belonging, security, love, and intimate connection. Cell phones, text messaging, and e-mail do keep people electronically connected and are useful, convenient modes of communicating. But they do not replace personal interaction, eye contact, spontaneous conversation that includes all family members, and physical touches, like hugs.
“Getting back to the table allows us to love and nurture each other and renew connections to our families...” said Art Smith, personal chef for Oprah Winfrey. “Such connections are crucial in a fast-paced world where we feel more disconnected every day. One of the best ways I know to restore that daily balance is to sit down at the table.” [4]
Nor do myriad lessons, sports, and recreational activities substitute for family dinners. Diane Scalia, a self-titled “chefpreneur,” said, “What children want — what their parents want — is to spend time with their family. Being around the table at mealtime feeds them on a level that goes beyond sustenance. Sitting down to dinner is a ritual that builds a strong family, more than being in a car all day going from activity to activity.” [5]
Ronni Lundi wrote how her family's gathering around their kitchen table fostered her sense of identity:
It was around that table that I learned the lessons of my life, the stories that told me who I was and where I came from, the stories that led me to imagine where I might go... I took those stories in greedily, hungrily, and was nourished on them like they were a glass of cold sweet milk and a wedge of my mother's golden steaming fresh cornbread. [6]
Families, whatever their make-up, require quality time to nurture and strengthen relationships. Although eating dinner together at home is not a cure-all for every health or family problem, it is a significant contributing factor to the well-being, both physically and emotionally, of individual family members and to families as a whole. Health and family are so important in any person's life that they deserve the best possible caretaking.
The effort spent in preparing tasty and nutritious meals, then gathering the family around the table to eat together is one of the best investments any family can make. The benefits are significant, lasting, and available to every family that takes time for dinner.
• Art Smith, Back to the Table: The Reunion of Food and Family (New York: Hyperion, 2001), 15.
• Charlotte Latvala, “8 Secrets of Happy Families,” Parenting , Oct. 2002, 105.
• Mimi Wilson and Mary Beth Lagerborg, Table Talk: Activities and Recipes for Bringing the Family Together (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 2000), 2.
• Art Smith, Back to the Table: The Reunion of Food and Family (New York: Hyperion, 2001), 15.
• Jeanne Ambrose, “Heart of the Kitchen,” Better Homes and Gardens, March 2004, 242.
• Ronni Lundy, “The Tao of Cornbread,” in L. Elisabeth Beatt ie, ed., Savory Memories (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1998), 66.
