{"id":570,"date":"2011-09-07T05:00:30","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T09:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eatwithjoy.org\/?p=570"},"modified":"2011-09-07T05:00:30","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T09:00:30","slug":"why-eating-together-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rachelmariestone\/2011\/09\/07\/why-eating-together-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Eating Together Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

All right, I was a little fired up yesterday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(My mom\u2019s response? \u201cYou\u2019re like that critic<\/a> in Ratatouille<\/em>.<\/strong> Authors will be afraid of you reading their books.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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Actually, I try hard to be generous in my readings. This may sound corny, but a number of years ago a teacher said that we ought always to \u201clove the author\u201d\u2013as in, \u201clove your neighbor,\u201d and the author is your neighbor\u2013and that has always stuck with me. But sometimes? Sometimes there is just nothing<\/em> good to say about a book, and yesterday was one of those times!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But if I rack my brain, there is one good thing to say about the book: it brings attention to something that matters a lot: eating together. <\/em>It\u2019s something close to my heart, something I\u2019ve written about quite a few times (here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, and also in several undisclosed locations.)<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s something that I try to live<\/em> daily: ever since my husband and I married, we\u2019ve made eating together a priority in our lives. One of the reasons I\u2019m so passionate about it is because eating together with him is one of the things that helped me heal from years of disordered eating and thinking.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But even before that\u2013in my tortured starvation years, when the thought of eating clenched my stomach and filled me with fear\u2013I could eat heartily with my mom.<\/strong> Once, when I was 17 and just a few days away from a very serious operation, she came home from work to find me curled up, filled with anxiety, and very hungry from a day of self-inflicted fasting. She took me straight to the diner for a Belgian waffle topped with ice-cream, which I ate with gusto.<\/strong> In her presence, and hers alone, I could eat with childlike abandon, even if elsewhere I was disordered as ever.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Interestingly, numerous studies have confirmed what I have experienced: that meals eaten together are good medicine. People\u2019s eyes tend to glaze over when you start talking about \u201cstudies,\u201d so I\u2019ll keep it brief and name just a few:<\/p>\n