On the Table

“Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife.”

“The chief thing for life is water, and bread, and clothing, and an house to cover shame.”

“Tell me what kind of food you eat, and I will tell you what kind of man you are.”

“He who receives friends and pays no attention to the repast prepared for them, is not fit to have friends.”

“The pot boils best on your own hearth.”

“My girls, will you give them your breakfast as a Christmas present?”

Teenagers who sat down to fewer than three family dinners a week were far likelier to smoke, drink and use drugs than those who ate with their family five nights or more.

Pooling seventeen studies, children who shared three or more family meals a week were twelve per cent less likely to be overweight and thirty-five per cent less likely to show disordered eating.

The meal alone is not the medicine. Family dinners helped adolescents most where the relationships around the table were already warm.

“The pleasure of the table belongs to all ages, to all conditions, to all countries; it mingles with all other pleasures, and remains at last to console us for their departure.”