Sit down to eat

Somewhere in the last thirty years eating stopped being a thing we do together and became a thing we do while doing something else. Standing at the counter. In the car. At the desk. On the sofa, with the plate on the knee and the phone in the other hand, not tasting any of it.

We ask for one meal a day at a table. One, because every meal is not possible for most families. Everyone sat down, the phones in another room, the food in the middle, and no rush to leave.

Then there is chewing, which sounds like a joke and is not. Most of us swallow food half-chewed because we are in a hurry to get back to the screen, and the body takes about twenty minutes to register that it has eaten. A meal that takes twenty minutes ends when you are full. A meal that takes seven ends when the plate is empty, and then you are in the fridge an hour later.

The reason this matters more than any of the food advice is the children. They learn what food is by watching us eat it. A child who grows up at a table where real food is cooked, eaten slowly and talked over will eat that way at forty. A child who grows up with a plate on the knee will too.