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About MARIAL MARIAL in the News Busy lives cut into family mealtime THE DINNER DANCE Wednesday, April 13, 2005 The Cleveland Plain Dealer By Laura Taxel Special to The Plain Dealer What's for dinner" is no longer a simple question with a single answer. When it comes to food, Having It Your Way has gone from a branding slogan to a fundamental American right, almost up there with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Once, everybody sat down together for the evening meal. They did so at the same time, and they ate the same thing. That's becoming less and less true today. Personal preferences and separate schedules are shaping how and what we eat. If snacking substitutes for dinner at your house, and heating up prepared foods is considered cooking, you're not alone. Because "Come and get it!" has turned into stop in and grab it. "When I was growing up in the 1950s," recalls Andrew Smith, editor of the new "Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America" ( Oxford, 2004), "dinner was a sacred time in suburbia. In my family, we started with a prayer, then talked about our day. We were expected to eat whatever my mother served, even if it was something you detested. "Things changed when women left the kitchen to join the work force, and microwaves came in, making it possible to prepare many individual dishes quickly and easily," Smith adds. According to data gathered by the Hartman Group, a Washington- state-based research and consulting firm that studies consumer behavior, families rarely eat together these days. When they do, it's not likely to be a single home-cooked meal. Instead, each person at the table eats something different. It's more like restaurant dining than the ritual we think of as dinner. They've dubbed this trend "the fragmentation of the household diet." "This is a major cultural shift throughout the country," says Laurie Demeritt, Hartman's president. That movement "crosses all demographic boundaries of age, race, ethnicity and socio-economic levels. We found that people everywhere are eating customized meals. "Grocery shopping is not about selecting food for a family but accommodating a variety of separate needs and desires that include culinary tastes, dietary restrictions and on-the-go lives." A typical family of today might look something like this: Mom's avoiding carbs, in order to lose weight; Dad has high blood pressure and is on a salt-restricted regimen; One child is lactose intolerant; Another progeny prefers chicken nuggets and tater tots over all other foods; The oldest sibling has given up meat on moral grounds. Combine this with the reality that eating on the run is almost required for today's fast-track superstrivers. On any given night, there are music lessons, tournaments, classes and meetings to attend, plus the likelihood of a parent working late. The result? The family dinner, as it was once understood, is now something reserved for special occasions. Nobody's minding the pantry "One significant factor we identified," says Demeritt, "is that Mom's no longer the daily gatekeeper, deciding what everyone will eat and then preparing and dispensing it. Nobody is [doing that]. People within a household eat in shifts and fend for themselves." Two things are happening, according to Bradd Shore, professor of anthropology at Emory University in Atlanta and director of the Myth and Ritual in American Life Center. "Meals have become lifestyle choices," Shore says, "and meal times are flexible and modularized." Families, he explains, once had food identities. If you were Catholic, you had fish on Friday. Poles ate pierogies. Eating was a communal activity and reflected shared values. This has been displaced by the idea that the individual is more important than the group. "The meal is no longer a unifying force, because the baby boomer generation puts a high value on personal choice," Shore says. "Each person feels that they should get what they like, and many are defining themselves by what they eat -- becoming health-food devotees, vegans or followers of Atkins. "The good thing about this is that we can address our personal health and diet concerns. What's lost," Shaw adds, "is a kind of social cohesion." He notes that even when people say they eat together, what they mean is that everyone didn't eat alone. "It turns out there's a quorum concept at work," Shore says. "Typically, one or more members of a family are missing from a family meal: A parent might be out of town, an older child has their own plans for the evening, or someone's at soccer practice. What we're seeing is that the family is 'atomizing' in terms of its ability to function as a unit." And this, says food historian Barbara Haber, is a missed opportunity. "The family dinner has traditionally been a way of socializing and civilizing children and establishing sound eating habits," says Haber, author of "From Hardtack to Homefries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals" (Penguin U.S.A, 2003). "Important interactions take place at the table. Getting full is not the same as being nourished physically, emotionally and spiritually." The many factors that contribute to this trend tell us a great deal about ourselves, our priorities and what's been happening in American society over the last fifty years, Haber observes. "What we're seeing is the fallout from the early years of feminism, when cooking, like all domestic chores, was labeled oppressive; the impact of over-scripted childhoods, with kids signed up for every kind of enrichment their parents can afford; and an indulgent, nonauthoritarian style of parenting." And that's not all, she adds. Food as politics and the fallout "Americans are also using food for self-improvement and self- expression. We believe eating certain foods and avoiding others can fix what's wrong with us or make us better people -- and we get a lot of conflicting information about what's healthy." Further complicating the dinner hour is the shape-shifting state of the family itself. The latest information from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that there are 11,853,000 single-parent households in this country. Divorce has turned many kids into commuters who are part-time residents of multiple homes. Remarriage creates blended families in which children may have very divergent sets of tastes and habits. The two-income household, whether by choice or necessity, has become standard. With both parents working, no one's got time to make a meal. Often, nobody likes to cook or is very skilled at it. According to a study by Miriam Chaiken, professor of anthropology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and president of the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, a growing segment of the population lacks even rudimentary cooking knowledge. "I asked 20- to 30-year-olds to describe the most complicated dish they knew how to make. It was either scrambled eggs or macaroni and cheese from the box," Chaiken recalls. Interestingly, this has happened while the popularity of TV cooking shows has soared. Chaiken says her sample group are enthusiastic viewers of these programs. "But for them, these are pure entertainment, like game shows or reality TV," she says. "They don't see them as teaching anything they'd actually try themselves. When it comes to eating, they rely on convenience products, snack foods and meals eaten out." There's nothing wrong with eating what you like. A positive aspect of the break-up of the family dinner into tailor-made meals, say some experts, is that it allows individuals to pursue their own dietary agendas based on taste, health and weight concerns and ethical principles. There are other advantages. Kids who are capable of getting themselves fed are independent, self-sufficient and better prepared to live away from home when they get older, critics assert. "Thanks to the food industry," says Barrett Benton, a nutritional anthropologist at St. John's University in New York, "families can function as though they have a short-order cook on staff. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but what concerns me are the nutritional implications of eating processed, packaged products that are high in unhealthy fats, sugar and salt. Convenience foods also don't offer much variety, and if children aren't served things like fresh fruits and vegetables repeatedly when they're young, they won't develop a taste for them. Science has shown that it takes seven to 10 exposures for kids to begin to enjoy certain flavors. And they're more likely to try things if they see others enjoying them." The "morally loaded ideal of the traditional family dinner," asserts the Hartman Group's report, is no longer a reality. It has been replaced by a cafeteria-style approach that includes a mix of fast, frozen, packaged, fresh grocery store prepared and takeout options. It's unlikely that life will return to the way it once was. But there are still some good reasons to ring that imaginary dinner bell now and then, calling everybody to the table. Eating is one thing; sharing a meal is something else. Laura Taxel is a free-lance writer and author of " Cleveland Ethnic Eats, 2005 Edition" (Gray & Co., 2004). One of her essays, "The Staff and Stuff of Life," appears in "Best Food Writing 2004," edited by Holly Hughes (Marlowe & Co., 2004). She lives in Cleveland Heights.
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