Dinner is more than just eating

Did you know that one of the suggested action steps given to parents with overweight kids is to have a 
family dinner? A family dinner is the evening meal period when everyone sits down all at the same time to 
eat and to talk, and it's the time when TVs, computers and video games are turned off. Fifty years ago 
the practice of having a family meal on Sunday and regular weeknight family dinners was an honored tradition 
in most middleclass American homes. These days the practice of eating a meal while connecting with others 
is disappearing from our cultural landscape. Instead of being a pleasurable, nutritious break, eating is just 
another chore on an endless to-do list of things that have to get done in a day. For many people dinner is an 
opportunity to multi-task. We eat and watch TV. We eat and read. We eat and scroll through e-mail. We eat 
and drive. We eat and do work or homework with our kids. 

Eating like this "doesn't count" because it doesn't really register that we're eating. When eating is just another 
multi-tasking activity, the potential to nourish your mind, your body, your emotions and your relationships is 
dramatically reduced. This is an invitation to stop treating dinner like a mindless chore and to start nourishing 
yourself with dinner by making dinner count. Eating counts when you pay attention to what you're putting in 
your mouth and when you notice and appreciate you're actually having a meal. One of the functions of saying 
grace before a meal is to pay attention to your food and to express gratitude for it. The practice of saying grace 
makes food your friend, not your enemy. It makes food something to celebrate rather than something to get 
through. And it instantly uplifts your state of mind to a positive place – all this from noticing your food and saying 
thanks for it. Consider incorporating a small expression of grace at dinner time. Grace can be said out loud or silently. 
The effects are the same.