Speaker 1: Pushkin Happy. International Day of Happiness. The world has been
Speaker 1: marking March twentieth as a day dedicated to happiness for
Speaker 1: over a decade, part of a worldwide push to get
Speaker 1: governments to take happiness more seriously and to enact policies
Speaker 1: that improve our well being. International Day of Happiness also
Speaker 1: marks the release of the World Happiness Report, and Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab has been given early access to all the new
Speaker 1: research this report contains, and over the next two episodes,
Speaker 1: we've got lots of highlights, including things you can do
Speaker 1: right now to improve your life. The most famous headline
Speaker 1: grabbing part of each year's World Happiness Report are the
Speaker 1: country rankings. People around the world are asked, on a
Speaker 1: scale of one to ten, how satisfied are you with
Speaker 1: your life? The crown for the happiest people usually goes
Speaker 1: to a country somewhere in Scandinavia, and this year the
Speaker 1: happiest country.
Speaker 2: Is Bendland again, followed by Denmark and Iceland and Sweden
Speaker 2: and the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: I think this is yan. Emmanuel Denev, professor of economics
Speaker 1: and behavioral science at the University of Oxford, an editor
Speaker 1: of the World Happiness Report. During the years he studied
Speaker 1: these country data. He's knowniced some changes. The rankings used
Speaker 1: to be dominated by the big rich nations, but all
Speaker 1: that's changing.
Speaker 2: Mexico and Costa Rica entered the top ten hugely, exciting
Speaker 2: a kudos to them. Eastern European countries continued their ascent,
Speaker 2: and that goes at the expense of the large industrial powers.
Speaker 2: So Germany tumbles out of top twenty, the UK tumbles
Speaker 2: out of the top twenty, and the US drops the
Speaker 2: twenty fourth wow. And then at the very bottom Afghanistan
Speaker 2: still and this time average life satisfaction in Afghanistan SETAI
Speaker 2: one point thirty four out of ten.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: As I said before, the country rankings tend to grab
Speaker 1: the headlines, but scientists like Yan and I are even
Speaker 1: more interested in what's causing these differences in life satisfaction,
Speaker 1: and one of the big factors might involve eating. There's
Speaker 1: been a ton of discussion about what we eat, but
Speaker 1: the World Happiness Report takes a different approach. It focuses
Speaker 1: on who we're eating with. We tend to eat fourteen
Speaker 1: big meals a week. Who are we spending time with
Speaker 1: during all those lunches and dinners. Well, it turns out
Speaker 1: that the answer to that question seems to have a
Speaker 1: big impact on our well being because the World Happiness
Speaker 1: Report found that some people share meals with others, while
Speaker 1: some folks are going hungry for company. So why focus
Speaker 1: on sharing.
Speaker 2: Meals the extent to which people share meals together as
Speaker 2: a proxy for the quality of our social connections and
Speaker 2: the quantity of social connections that we have, essentially our
Speaker 2: social capital, if you will, in the last seven days,
Speaker 2: over the past week, how many of your lunches and
Speaker 2: dinners were shared with somebody else? So about one and
Speaker 2: six people approximately in the United States we're dining alone
Speaker 2: in the early two thousands, two thousand and three to
Speaker 2: be precise, and that's going up to one in four
Speaker 2: people is dining alone in the United States by about
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, So that's a fifty three percent increase
Speaker 2: or so in dining alone, but strikingly mostly youth, to
Speaker 2: be really precise. Youth are almost twice as likely to
Speaker 2: be dining alone today as compared to two decades ago.
Speaker 2: And I thought, wow, these.
Speaker 1: Findings are huge because eating alone is pretty bad for you,
Speaker 1: and a lot of us are finding ourselves having winter
Speaker 1: dinner by ourselves. Even when we have families around us
Speaker 1: at home, colleagues at work, or peers at college, it's
Speaker 1: so easy to end up eating alone. So I've turned
Speaker 1: to an experienced clinical psychologist, family therapist in an advocate
Speaker 1: for shared meals. For advice, you.
Speaker 3: Could set the clock by my father walking through the
Speaker 3: door at seven o'clock and dinner started at ten after seven.
Speaker 1: This is doctor Ann Fischel, Associate professor at the Harvard
Speaker 1: Medical School.
Speaker 3: He would get out of his suit and put on
Speaker 3: his play clothes and we would sit down, my mother,
Speaker 3: my father, and my sister. We didn't really do any
Speaker 3: other rituals. We didn't have Thanksgiving, but dinner was sank
Speaker 3: or sangd and my mother didn't like to be stuck
Speaker 3: in the kitchen, so every meal she made was super quick,
Speaker 3: so quick. The years later, when I hosted my first
Speaker 3: dinner party, I put a chicken, a roast chicken in
Speaker 3: and took it out after thirty minutes, because I'd never
Speaker 3: seen her spend more than thirty minutes in the kitchen.
Speaker 3: And of course it was a bloody mess. But anyway,
Speaker 3: those dinners were really important to me as a child,
Speaker 3: and looking back, I realized that a lot of the
Speaker 3: things that I know now about being a family therapist
Speaker 3: I learned around my childhood dinner table. You know how
Speaker 3: to diffuse conflict, how even if somebody's quiet, it doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that they don't have a lot of things on
Speaker 3: their mind. How important it is to draw everybody out
Speaker 3: so everybody has a chance to talk. How fun it
Speaker 3: is to hear stories about family members, to hear gossip
Speaker 3: about people in the building or the neighborhood. So all
Speaker 3: of that I learned at my dinner table.
Speaker 1: And such a believer in the virtues of us all
Speaker 1: eating together that she helped found the Family Dinner Project.
Speaker 1: I asked her to explain a little bit about it.
Speaker 3: So I was one of the co founders in twenty ten,
Speaker 3: and the mission is to build on the research based
Speaker 3: benefits of family dinner, the benefits that come from regular
Speaker 3: family dinners that bring nutritional, cognitive, and mental health benefits.
Speaker 3: I define family really broadly. Family is anybody who makes
Speaker 3: you feel like home. Family is anywhere that you find community.
Speaker 3: That could be people who aren't related to you. I'm
Speaker 3: starting to work with patients with dementia, and I would
Speaker 3: say part of their family are the other residents in
Speaker 3: the memory care unit as well as the caregivers. It
Speaker 3: can be college age kids eating together in a cafeteria.
Speaker 3: It can be friends coming over for a tired Wednesday
Speaker 3: night dinner. And what we found was that ninety percent
Speaker 3: of most American families think that family dinners are a
Speaker 3: great idea, but more than fifty percent of families are
Speaker 3: eating dinner together. So the Family Dinner Project was designed
Speaker 3: to bridge that gap, to make it easier, more doable, simpler,
Speaker 3: more fun, more meaningful, so that more families could harness
Speaker 3: these research back benefits of family dinner.
Speaker 1: And so let's talk about why family dinners are so important.
Speaker 1: Maybe starting with the physical health benefits. How can our
Speaker 1: physical health benefit from kind of having more family dinners.
Speaker 3: So, there are a lot of nutritional benefits that come
Speaker 3: from home cooked meals, even if you're not trying that hard.
Speaker 3: Portion size tends to be smaller than the restaurant equivalents,
Speaker 3: which may account for lower OBCD rates associated with regular
Speaker 3: family dinners. But also home cooked meals tend to be
Speaker 3: lower in sugar and salt and fat, and higher and
Speaker 3: fruits and vegetables and other nutrients. It's also associated with
Speaker 3: better cardiovascular healths in young teens and also associated with
Speaker 3: lower asthma symptoms, which may be a little puzzling. Maybe
Speaker 3: it speaks because sometimes asthma's associated with anxiety, which is
Speaker 3: lowered if the dinner is relaxing and not so stressful.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's because parents can remind their kids to take medication.
Speaker 3: So these are some of the health benefits.
Speaker 1: So your anxiety comment also reminds me that there are
Speaker 1: lots of mental health benefits to family dinners. What are
Speaker 1: some of those.
Speaker 3: There really are? I mean, there's so many that as
Speaker 3: a family therapist that sort of joke, I could almost
Speaker 3: be out of business if more families had regular family dinners.
Speaker 3: So they're associated with, on the part of kids, lower
Speaker 3: rates of anxiety and depression, lower rates of substance use
Speaker 3: and teenage pregnancy, lower rates of eating disorders, and on
Speaker 3: the upside, with more resilience, more self esteem, and kids
Speaker 3: reporting that they feel more connected to their parents when
Speaker 3: they have regular family dinners. And then it turns out
Speaker 3: their mental health benefits for adults too, lower rates of
Speaker 3: depression and anxiety for adults who eat with their kids,
Speaker 3: but also adults who eat with other adults I can
Speaker 3: get very, very excited about the mental health benefits.
Speaker 1: Another benefit that was surprising when I first started reading
Speaker 1: your work is this idea that they're also especially for kids,
Speaker 1: these cognitive and academic benefits that come from family dinners.
Speaker 1: What do we know about those?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so for young kids or preschoolers and toddlers, the
Speaker 3: language that they hear around the dinner table as their
Speaker 3: parents are sort of casually catching up about the day,
Speaker 3: those little stories contain ten times more unusual or rare
Speaker 3: words than would be expected for a two year old
Speaker 3: or a three year old to know, and ten times
Speaker 3: more unusual words than would show up in picture books
Speaker 3: that kids are read to. I think why that's significant
Speaker 3: is that kids who have larger vocabularies read earlier and
Speaker 3: more easily than kids who have slimmer vocabularies. I was
Speaker 3: just quoting this research to my son, who has a
Speaker 3: two year old grandchild, and she was saying, to her parents,
Speaker 3: what are you two talking about? I said, that's so great.
Speaker 3: You know, I hope you told her what you were
Speaker 3: talking about, because that's going to give a little booster
Speaker 3: to her vocabulary.
Speaker 1: So it seems like they're all these benefits but it
Speaker 1: seems like sometimes when families think about figuring out a
Speaker 1: family meal, it sometimes feels just totally overwhelming. Sometimes families
Speaker 1: even treat it with dread. Is this the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that you hear in the Family Dinner Project too?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? I mean, we are such a busy, tired, harried people.
Speaker 3: You know, most of our kids are doing so many
Speaker 3: extracurricular activities that it can just feel like one more
Speaker 3: thing on the to do list. And that is the
Speaker 3: number one challenge or obstacle. You know, we're too tired,
Speaker 3: our schedules don't mesh up, and so at the Family
Speaker 3: Dinner Project, we've spent a lot of time talking to
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of families across the country to find
Speaker 3: out some workarounds for this common challenge.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the barriers you hear
Speaker 1: about most often. I just think the biggest one is
Speaker 1: just time.
Speaker 3: Right time, being too tired, picky eaters, whether that's a
Speaker 3: partner or a child. You know, what's the point of
Speaker 3: going to the trouble of making a meal if not
Speaker 3: everybody's going to eat it. I don't want to be
Speaker 3: a short order cook and make four different meals I
Speaker 3: go to the trouble of making the meal, and then
Speaker 3: all we do is fight or nobody talks. I can't
Speaker 3: get people to talk. Conflict and tension at the table.
Speaker 3: Budget worries healthy food is so expensive? How do I
Speaker 3: get my dollar to stretch so that I can feed
Speaker 3: my children unprocessed healthy food? Distraction at the table. My
Speaker 3: kids turn on their gadgets, and I guess we do too.
Speaker 3: What do we do about technology at the table? So
Speaker 3: I'd say those are the recurring obstacles that I hear
Speaker 3: about over and over.
Speaker 1: When we hear these barriers, it seems really like hard
Speaker 1: to get to dinner. But you've argue that part of
Speaker 1: the barriers comes from our minds. We have these misconceptions
Speaker 1: about the things that count as family dinners. And so
Speaker 1: let's go through some of these misconceptions and see if
Speaker 1: we can kind of like clear the air right. One
Speaker 1: of the misconceptions is this idea that for a family
Speaker 1: dinner to really count as a family dinner, everybody has
Speaker 1: to be there, everybody has to be there for the
Speaker 1: whole time. Is this really the case? How should we
Speaker 1: think about this differently?
Speaker 3: First off, I want to say this isn't a nostalgia project.
Speaker 3: You know, we're not trying to go back to the
Speaker 3: spotless kitchens of the nineteen fifties where mother was home
Speaker 3: all day baking a I don't know, a pork loine.
Speaker 3: Fortunately that ship has sailed. So family dinner is less
Speaker 3: about the food than about what happens once the family
Speaker 3: gathers around the food. So really best to focus on
Speaker 3: the atmosphere around the dinner table, conversation, having a good time.
Speaker 3: You know, I call that the secret sauce of dinner,
Speaker 3: and you're absolutely right. Family dinner doesn't have to be
Speaker 3: the whole family sitting down. As one family said to me,
Speaker 3: we have a rule no one eats alone. This is
Speaker 3: a family with five sons, and they did kind of
Speaker 3: split shift dinners, so they would have two people eating,
Speaker 3: and then later on maybe one of those people would
Speaker 3: join another and so on, and they would have one
Speaker 3: meal that could be reheated, maybe a stew or soup.
Speaker 3: So that's another myth. It doesn't have to be everybody.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be dinner. For some families, dinner
Speaker 3: time is just beyond the pale. It's just too hectic.
Speaker 3: It could be family breakfast. It could be a fabulous
Speaker 3: Sunday brunch with extended family. There are really sixteen opportunities
Speaker 3: in a week, seven breakfasts, seven dinners, and two weekend lunches.
Speaker 3: And then they're also intentional snacks, you know, push away
Speaker 3: from your computer, come down to the kitchen table at
Speaker 3: ten o'clock and let's have apples and hot chocolate. And
Speaker 3: then it doesn't have to be family. It could be
Speaker 3: you and a best friend. It could be a Tuesday
Speaker 3: night group that gets together to talk about books over food.
Speaker 3: It could be elders at an assisted living breaking bread together.
Speaker 1: It seems like one of the reasons that meeting together
Speaker 1: to have these meals is so challenging is we put
Speaker 1: these like ridiculous restrictions on ourselves. We get kind of
Speaker 1: perfectionistic about it, and it seems like you're go with
Speaker 1: the family dinner project is just to say we don't
Speaker 1: have to do this perfectly. We just should do this
Speaker 1: a little bit more often. So it's kind of family
Speaker 1: dinner with a bit more grace than we usually give ourselves.
Speaker 3: I love the way you put that perfect is really
Speaker 3: not our friend. Here. Dinner with a toddler might be
Speaker 3: five minutes. That's fine, that's something to build on. You know,
Speaker 3: the average American dinner is only twenty two minutes. Doesn't
Speaker 3: have to be food made from scratch. It doesn't have
Speaker 3: to be heirloom tomatoes, doesn't have to be a perfectly
Speaker 3: roasted chicken, doesn't have to be perfect manners. Yes, let
Speaker 3: go of the perfect and give yourself some more grace.
Speaker 1: So eating meals with family, friends, and colleagues has a
Speaker 1: ton of benefits. We're going to take a quick break now,
Speaker 1: but when we get back and we'll have more tips
Speaker 1: on how to overcome all the obstacles that stop us
Speaker 1: sharing meals. Before the break, doctor Anne Faschel took us
Speaker 1: through a lot of the things that stop us from
Speaker 1: enjoying shared meals, be that eating with our loved ones
Speaker 1: at home, having friends over, or sitting down with others
Speaker 1: during our lunch break at work. I asked ant to
Speaker 1: down those obstacles and offer some concrete solutions.
Speaker 3: For a lot of families, it just feels like another
Speaker 3: thing on their to do list. And you know, partly
Speaker 3: I like to, without being too preachy, I hope to
Speaker 3: say family meal time is really the most reliable time
Speaker 3: that we have to look eye to eye, to have fun,
Speaker 3: to relax, to share stories about our day. You know,
Speaker 3: we don't sit around campfires telling stories. We don't write
Speaker 3: letters with stories. So just reminding families what a rich
Speaker 3: opportunity this is and how it packs really such a punch,
Speaker 3: and then you know, really trying to come up with
Speaker 3: some meals that are very very easy that you could
Speaker 3: almost make in your sleep, food that you have in
Speaker 3: your pantry, like a pasta with tomato sauce, or what
Speaker 3: I call my yoga eggs that I can make when
Speaker 3: I get off work at six and have to be
Speaker 3: out the door by six thirty that are just quick
Speaker 3: sauteed vegetables with eggs on top. So coming up with
Speaker 3: those and getting a list of meals from your family
Speaker 3: so that you won't get belly aching. You'll have it
Speaker 3: like a rotating list of meals you know are acceptable
Speaker 3: to every Maybe they don't all adore every meal, but
Speaker 3: they'll eat them and you can get onto the more
Speaker 3: fun things about family dinner and taking stock of weather.
Speaker 3: Dinner is really the best time of day for your family.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's breakfast. Years ago, Cheerios came to us and said,
Speaker 3: we know you're the family dinner project, But how about
Speaker 3: the family breakfast project? And we came up with breakfast
Speaker 3: that took seven minutes, because that's the amount of time
Speaker 3: if you don't press your snooze alarm, you can get
Speaker 3: seven minutes of your day back. And so we built
Speaker 3: easy meals with a game to play at the breakfast
Speaker 3: table and a conversation starter. And they were all about
Speaker 3: anticipating the day rather than reviewing it. If you came
Speaker 3: up with a weather analogy for the day, what would
Speaker 3: it be, and then we might check it at the
Speaker 3: end of the day. Or what are you most looking
Speaker 3: forward to? Or what are you worried about? Or let's
Speaker 3: write some notes and put them in each other's lunch
Speaker 3: boxes or lunch bags. So that's another thing for very
Speaker 3: busy families, is to pivot to something else.
Speaker 1: You've also mentioned the possibility of engaging in what you
Speaker 1: called flexible courses, and this is particularly for families that
Speaker 1: might not have everybody home at the same time. How
Speaker 1: does this work and why is it so effective?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm thinking about it at different stages of
Speaker 3: the life cycle. You know, if a family, if a
Speaker 3: couple has a toddler who goes to sleep at seven
Speaker 3: and they want to have a family meal, but they're
Speaker 3: really not ready to eat, So maybe they enjoy some
Speaker 3: cut up vegetables or some cheese with their toddler while
Speaker 3: the toddler has her family dinner. They put their toddler
Speaker 3: to bed, and then they have the rest of their
Speaker 3: family dinner. Or if you've got kids as they get older,
Speaker 3: coming home late from sports practices, you might have a
Speaker 3: big nutritional snack with them at five o'clock. Book, and
Speaker 3: that's really the time that one parent and a child
Speaker 3: plays games as conversation starters, enjoys that meal.
Speaker 1: But then when the child comes home.
Speaker 3: At eight o'clock, maybe they join in the family dinner
Speaker 3: and they have dessert with the other family members. So
Speaker 3: it's the idea of sort of flexible courses. Depending on
Speaker 3: the age and stage of the child and how busy
Speaker 3: the different schedules are, you can sort of mix and
Speaker 3: match who eats what with whom.
Speaker 1: When you've also argued that one of the things we
Speaker 1: need to do to fight against these busy schedules is
Speaker 1: to really push back on as culture of commitment. I
Speaker 1: thought this was a really important one.
Speaker 3: What do you mean there, Yeah, so there's a colleague
Speaker 3: of mind named Bill Dougherty who's also a family therapist
Speaker 3: in Minnesota, and he mounted a kind of statewide pushback
Speaker 3: program where he would organize parents to go together to
Speaker 3: talk to the coaches or the director of a play
Speaker 3: and say, we love what you're doing. Our kids love
Speaker 3: being involved in soccer and Macbeth, but family dinner is
Speaker 3: really important to all of us for all these different reasons.
Speaker 3: Could you adjust the rehearsal schedules. Could you make them
Speaker 3: a little bit later, have them and earlier so our
Speaker 3: kids can get home for dinner. That was so much
Speaker 3: more effective than having one squeaky wheel going and to
Speaker 3: go to the soccer coach to say please, please change
Speaker 3: the schedule. So, you know, I think that parents really
Speaker 3: have that power to influence extracurricular activities, and I think
Speaker 3: they don't deploy it very often.
Speaker 1: So those are some strategies we can use to push
Speaker 1: back against this barrier of time, right, get a little flexible,
Speaker 1: maybe have some short breaks, push back against some of
Speaker 1: these commitments. What about strategies for people who just think
Speaker 1: that the cooking is too much work, that the overwhelming
Speaker 1: part is really figuring out the dinner part. How can
Speaker 1: they deal with that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I would say our website, the Family Dinner Project,
Speaker 3: has a ton of great easy recipes that are eight
Speaker 3: ingredients or less, take thirty minutes or less, and families
Speaker 3: can sign up and get a Dinner Tonight which has
Speaker 3: a recipe and then a conversation starter and a game,
Speaker 3: and we have budget friendly which but they're about two
Speaker 3: dollars and ten cents per person. So there's that. There's
Speaker 3: also maybe making double or triple batches over the weekend
Speaker 3: and freezing half of them or two thirds of them
Speaker 3: so that next week you have you can just defrost
Speaker 3: a stew or a soup and you've got most of
Speaker 3: your dinner made. You can ask other members of your
Speaker 3: family to help out. You know. That's I think a
Speaker 3: really important part of making dinner more enjoyable is getting help,
Speaker 3: whether it's with the grocery shopping or cooking part of it,
Speaker 3: or cleaning up or setting the table. Kids and partners
Speaker 3: of course can participate in this. We've done quite a
Speaker 3: bit of work with military families who tell us about
Speaker 3: doing dinner swaps when their spouses are deployed and they
Speaker 3: are single parents. And what they do is they make
Speaker 3: four time one meal, and then they meet and they swap,
Speaker 3: and they come away from the swap with four different
Speaker 3: meals that they can deploy for the rest of the week.
Speaker 3: So that's something else.
Speaker 1: I love that I did so much because I feel
Speaker 1: like this happens when friends have new babies, Like I've
Speaker 1: been involved in lots of these kind of Oh, someone's
Speaker 1: really busy, they have a new baby. Let's you know,
Speaker 1: I just make an extra batch of my lasagna to
Speaker 1: give to them, and other families do the same thing,
Speaker 1: but we forget that we don't necessarily need a newborn
Speaker 1: to be able to use a strategy like that, Like
Speaker 1: a bunch of families can do that every single week
Speaker 1: and get multiple different interesting meals for like a bunch
Speaker 1: of families.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, or it could be done. I mean, you
Speaker 3: maybe have to be a military family to be that organized,
Speaker 3: but you could do it once a week with a
Speaker 3: friend or a neighbor. So I think there's some sort
Speaker 3: of lower hanging fruit there.
Speaker 1: This also strikes me as another spot where just kind
Speaker 1: of giving ourselves grace and maybe not going for the
Speaker 1: most perfectionist meals possible can be helpful. Like I think
Speaker 1: sometimes we end up putting so much pressure on ourselves
Speaker 1: that we never or do the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: we want to do. Whereas if we just agreed to
Speaker 1: do it, you know, seventy five percent awesome family dinner,
Speaker 1: as we'd wind up doing it much more often than
Speaker 1: if we were trying to do it perfectly.
Speaker 3: Yes, and doing some shortcuts, you know, getting vegetables that
Speaker 3: have been pre cut, or a rotisserie chicken, you know,
Speaker 3: not making a salad, but putting all the different accouterments
Speaker 3: for a salad out plus some tuna fish or some
Speaker 3: egg salad and asking family members to assemble their own
Speaker 3: and that can be done with tacos with creps. That's
Speaker 3: also nice strategy for selective eaters if you've got very
Speaker 3: different tastes in the families. It's a way to have
Speaker 3: people be able to customize and choose what they want.
Speaker 3: But it's also kind of a quick dinner, like a
Speaker 3: charcuterie board kind of dinner.
Speaker 1: And so those are all ways to kind of fite
Speaker 1: this barrier that cooking feels like it's too much work.
Speaker 1: How about the barrier of technology, especially the fact that
Speaker 1: it's harder and harder for us to put our tech
Speaker 1: devices away, even for just you know, twenty minutes over
Speaker 1: the dinner table. What are some solutions there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did a survey a few years ago and
Speaker 3: found that parents were twice as likely to use their
Speaker 3: gadgets at the dinner table. So my first bit of
Speaker 3: advice is to ask the parents to kind of model
Speaker 3: the good behavior that they want from their kids. Some
Speaker 3: families have a very strict no technology policy. You know,
Speaker 3: everybody put their phones in the middle of the table
Speaker 3: and anybody who goes to reach for it has to
Speaker 3: do the dishes. And then some families have a more
Speaker 3: flexible version of that, and it might look like we
Speaker 3: can check our gadgets if it's to check a detail
Speaker 3: that we're having a fight about, like who won the
Speaker 3: World Series in nineteen eighty four. And then some families say, well,
Speaker 3: I want to be able to share a picture I
Speaker 3: took or a funny email I got, And that seems
Speaker 3: to have a kind of a different spirit because it
Speaker 3: keeps the focus on connection at the table. So for
Speaker 3: those families, the rule is we can't use our phones
Speaker 3: to connect with people who aren't there, so no texting
Speaker 3: with others or taking phone But it's okay to share
Speaker 3: things that came up on your phone today, as long
Speaker 3: as it's to the rest of the table. And then
Speaker 3: there's even some games that can incorporate technology, like a
Speaker 3: hot Potato selfie. You set the timer and you pass
Speaker 3: it around, and when the timer goes off, you take
Speaker 3: up selfie, and then you set the timer and you
Speaker 3: pass it around until everybody has taken a selfie, and
Speaker 3: then you know you have a funny little collection of
Speaker 3: photos from that dinner.
Speaker 1: It's time for a quick break, but we'll be back
Speaker 1: with more tips from Ann, including advice on how to
Speaker 1: diffuse the dinner table disagreements that can mess up so
Speaker 1: many meals. The Happiness Lab will be right back. When
Speaker 1: I think of shared meals with friends and family, my
Speaker 1: mind usually goes to meal prep, what ingredients do I need?
Speaker 1: And why should I turn the oven on? But doctor
Speaker 1: Anne Faschell thinks we should actually put more thought into
Speaker 1: preparing the dinner table. Conversation games and prompts are a
Speaker 1: great way to do this. It could be old favorites
Speaker 1: like twenty questions or would you rather? Or a suggestion
Speaker 1: from Anne's Family Dinner Table Project website, a game of guess,
Speaker 1: the ingredients. Just like a meal needs salt and pepper,
Speaker 1: it also needs playfulness and fun.
Speaker 3: I think we all need more play in our lives,
Speaker 3: and games are a really great way to do it.
Speaker 3: I play games in family therapy, often the same games
Speaker 3: that I play at the dinner table. I don't love
Speaker 3: competitive games at the dinner table, but games often lead
Speaker 3: to laughter. They often lead to conversation. Let's go around
Speaker 3: the table and say a rose something funny or positive
Speaker 3: that happened to thorn, something difficult or unpleasant, and a
Speaker 3: bud something we hope will happen tomorrow. Or let's tell
Speaker 3: two truths and a lie, you know, tell two stories
Speaker 3: about something that happened this week and one thing that's
Speaker 3: just a bold faced lie, and others will try to
Speaker 3: guess which is the made up thing. So ways to
Speaker 3: get kids to share more without just asking them how
Speaker 3: is your day? And then I think food itself has
Speaker 3: so much many different properties that we can play with.
Speaker 3: You know, it can be slippery, it can have different smells,
Speaker 3: It has different colors, and so we can play with color.
Speaker 3: Ask our kids, what meal could we make that's all
Speaker 3: red or all green? Or what's a rainbow meal? And
Speaker 3: that way we can eat our colors, which itself is
Speaker 3: a very nutritious way to eat. Or let's play with space.
Speaker 3: Let's switch seats because families often sit in the same
Speaker 3: seats night after night. Or let's have a picnic, or
Speaker 3: let's have a dinner in bed. Food is to families
Speaker 3: like legos are to elementary school kids, as music is
Speaker 3: to adolescents. It's the source of play. It's one of
Speaker 3: the few things that we can do with our hands
Speaker 3: and all our senses, and we can make something together.
Speaker 3: How rare is that in twenty first century America that
Speaker 3: we can create something together, And that, to me is
Speaker 3: just really fun.
Speaker 1: Think I'm channeling some busy parent friends of mine who
Speaker 1: have toddlers and little kids, And as you're talking about
Speaker 1: playing with dolls and playing with foods, I'm hearing in
Speaker 1: my head what they might say, which is like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, it's going to be messy, and I don't
Speaker 1: have time to clean up. Any advice for kind of
Speaker 1: making games that avoid the like kind of cleanup worries too?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I tend to have a really high
Speaker 3: tolerance for mess which I mean, so here's just a
Speaker 3: small example to have small kids smear olive oil on
Speaker 3: vegetables that that get roasted at a high temperature will
Speaker 3: pretty much ensure that those kids will eat those vegetables
Speaker 3: because they've put their sticky little hands on it, and
Speaker 3: then the vegetables come out pretty crispy. Young kids tend
Speaker 3: not to like slimy foods, so yes, it's going to
Speaker 3: be messy. Your kids are going to be covered, hopefully
Speaker 3: just their hands in oil. But think about the trade off.
Speaker 3: They're going to eat something really delicious and healthy that
Speaker 3: you can eat too, and.
Speaker 1: Partly they're learning how to cook to right. You're also
Speaker 1: kind of weaving in a cooking demonstration while they're doing it.
Speaker 3: That's this could pay you back big time when they're
Speaker 3: a little bit older, and maybe we'll do a little
Speaker 3: cooking for you.
Speaker 1: We had a whole series of podcasts about parenting and
Speaker 1: parenting strategies, and one of the things we often heard
Speaker 1: is that anthropologists who study parents and other cultures often
Speaker 1: find that they have kids getting more involved in things
Speaker 1: like cooking and cleaning and so on. And I think
Speaker 1: in the US, we sometimes don't want our kids to
Speaker 1: do that because we think they won't do it. Perfectly
Speaker 1: or kind of mess it up. But then we lose
Speaker 1: these really interesting opportunities for teaching our kids because we
Speaker 1: don't have them involved. It seems like dinner time is
Speaker 1: yet another domain in which we could be doing this
Speaker 1: a little.
Speaker 3: Bit more absolutely. It reminds me of two parents, Eileen
Speaker 3: and Mary, who had a little four year old boy,
Speaker 3: and one of the moms really did not like mess
Speaker 3: at all and didn't really like the idea of playing
Speaker 3: with food and all of that, and they would get
Speaker 3: their vegetables from a co op each week, and one
Speaker 3: week they got a squash. They opened it up and
Speaker 3: the little boy exclaimed, oh my goodness, it's so different
Speaker 3: inside compaired to outside. And that was this amazing jumping
Speaker 3: off point for talking about all the different ways you
Speaker 3: can't know judge a book by its cover. Sort of
Speaker 3: an analogy. I think for family dinner that there are
Speaker 3: all kinds of surprises that lie around the table, so
Speaker 3: it can be the launching pad for lots of interesting conversations,
Speaker 3: not just about the food.
Speaker 1: I think this idea of sharing meals as an intimate
Speaker 1: experience gets to yet another barrier I see coming up
Speaker 1: not so much with families, but with maybe single folks
Speaker 1: or friends who want to get together for meals, which
Speaker 1: is I think we're often worried about having people in
Speaker 1: our personal space, right. You know, I think about even tonight,
Speaker 1: having someone over for dinner, and my head instantly goes
Speaker 1: to like, oh, my gosh, I didn't put that stuff
Speaker 1: away that's in the living room where the kitchen is
Speaker 1: kind of a mess. Like anyways to give ourselves grease
Speaker 1: and just allow our people into these intimate spaces so
Speaker 1: we can get the benefits of sharing meals even outside
Speaker 1: the family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think one way is to invite
Speaker 3: a friend over when you haven't completed making the dinner,
Speaker 3: so that you're bringing them into the making of the dinner.
Speaker 3: You know, often, particularly on a casual Wednesday night, a
Speaker 3: friend would like to help. They'd like to help you
Speaker 3: cut up those last salid ingredients. And I think that
Speaker 3: creates more of a feeling of we're all in this
Speaker 3: together and this is a shared meal, rather than you're
Speaker 3: a guest coming into it. I used to when I
Speaker 3: would have guests over and they say what can we bring?
Speaker 3: And I would say, oh no, no, no, no, don't
Speaker 3: bring anything. And then I realized that that was kind
Speaker 3: of selfish and kind of controlling and kind of perfectionistic.
Speaker 3: If I could ask them to bring a course, they
Speaker 3: already would feel more included, and I would also feel
Speaker 3: less burdened by having to make a meal. I think
Speaker 3: there's so many different ways to involve outsiders or friends.
Speaker 3: I think of a military mother who wrote a book
Speaker 3: called Dinner with Smilies, and her husband was deployed for
Speaker 3: a whole year, and every month they would invite somebody
Speaker 3: from their neighborhood or community to come to dinner and
Speaker 3: sit in the fall there's chair. One week it was
Speaker 3: a coach, one week it was the governor of may
Speaker 3: and I'm sure they failed the pressure to clean up
Speaker 3: for those, but it added such an interesting variation on
Speaker 3: their regular family dinner. And then I think of a
Speaker 3: family I worked with a single mom who often felt
Speaker 3: like there wasn't enough liveliness at the table because it
Speaker 3: was just one adult. And so her friends and her
Speaker 3: relatives knew that every Wednesday night was an open dinner night,
Speaker 3: and they never knew who would drop by, and she always,
Speaker 3: you know, made extra for that dinner.
Speaker 1: I've heard a similar suggestion where it's like you just
Speaker 1: have one night where it's like, you know, Wednesday is
Speaker 1: the open night, and maybe you don't even make extra dinner.
Speaker 1: It's like, as a friend, you can come over, but
Speaker 1: bring your own like bring a leftover, you can microwave it.
Speaker 1: Don't expect me to be perfect, right, you know, but
Speaker 1: this is a night where like doors open and you
Speaker 1: can show up. It also reminds me of a suggestion
Speaker 1: that I got from the journalist Oliver Berkman, who talks
Speaker 1: about all these things we can do to kind of
Speaker 1: manage our time with less perfectionism, and he has this
Speaker 1: idea that he calls scruffy hospitalality, which is kind of
Speaker 1: like you were saying, like you invite people over, but
Speaker 1: it's like you're going to have to do the dishes,
Speaker 1: You're going to have to tell me chop these vegetables.
Speaker 1: The house is not going to be clean, and we
Speaker 1: just sort of accept that at the beginning, that like
Speaker 1: we're going to have some hospitality, we're gonna have some
Speaker 1: shared meal time, but it's going to be pretty scruffy.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, like set the expectations where they should be.
Speaker 1: And it seems like that's just a message for all
Speaker 1: of this work, Right, there's so many benefits if we
Speaker 1: could find more ways to share meals broadly, even beyond
Speaker 1: our family. But to do that, we really just have
Speaker 1: to set our expectations a little bit less perfectionistically.
Speaker 3: Yes, one thing that we've been doing for well fifteen
Speaker 3: years at the Family Dinner Project is hosting big community dinners.
Speaker 3: And these are anywhere where families gather, libraries, military bases,
Speaker 3: homeless shelters, clinics, teaching kitchens. They're often groups of families
Speaker 3: who don't know each other, but who come to know
Speaker 3: each other in a ninety minute dinner where we cook together,
Speaker 3: we eat together, we play games, we have conversation jars
Speaker 3: on the tables, and people reach in and ask whimsical
Speaker 3: or silly or serious things of one another. And then
Speaker 3: I talk to the parents or the caregivers and say,
Speaker 3: what do you do well when it comes to family dinner,
Speaker 3: and what are your obstacles? And now let's take some
Speaker 3: of those obstacles and use the wisdom in this group
Speaker 3: to share our workarounds and hacks. That's really where I've
Speaker 3: learned probably the most, about how families find ways to
Speaker 3: have dinner, even though it's really not that easy.
Speaker 1: It's another barrier. Lots of families face, is it? Sometimes
Speaker 1: around the dinner table, there's tension, you know, maybe big
Speaker 1: tension we have, you know, political disagreements, but even like
Speaker 1: little tension. I'm just like pissy at you, mom for
Speaker 1: that thing you said to me. Any strategies for diffusing.
Speaker 3: That, Yeah, So I want to start with a piece
Speaker 3: of research on that, which I conducted during the pandemic.
Speaker 3: One of the only good things I can say about
Speaker 3: the pandemic is that it gave a naturalistic opportunity to
Speaker 3: study what happens when families have more dinner with one another.
Speaker 3: So something like sixty percent seventy percent of families shared
Speaker 3: family dinners during the pandemic. And what I found was
Speaker 3: that as frequency increased, the positive qualities of family dinner
Speaker 3: also increased. So parents reported that they talked more about gratitude,
Speaker 3: they laughed more, they talked about their identity as a family.
Speaker 3: They also shared more conversation about the news and public events,
Speaker 3: they used zoom to connect with friends and family. But
Speaker 3: they also had more conflict and tension at the table.
Speaker 3: And at first I was sort of upset by that finding,
Speaker 3: and then I thought, well, of course, if you're spending
Speaker 3: more time with your family. But dinner is a canvas.
Speaker 3: It's an opportunity to do what families do, and one
Speaker 3: of the things they do is have conflict and fight.
Speaker 3: And I will say that the positive qualities increased way
Speaker 3: more than the negative ones. So the first thing I
Speaker 3: would say is some conflict and tension is to be expected.
Speaker 3: And I know growing up we had drag out fights
Speaker 3: about politics. I love those fights and I think my
Speaker 3: parents did too. So you know, for some families, those
Speaker 3: kinds of philosophical or political fights are really part of
Speaker 3: their identity as a family. But in general, I think
Speaker 3: there are ways to minimize conflict. Probably not the best
Speaker 3: time to bring up topics, you know, our hot button
Speaker 3: issues for your kids. Maybe don't talk about that d
Speaker 3: they got in chemistry. Maybe go easy on teaching table
Speaker 3: matters that makes everybody tense. Just focus on the manners
Speaker 3: that matter that everybody can do better, you know, not
Speaker 3: interrupting each other or maybe not talking with a mouthful
Speaker 3: of food, But who cares about the elbows on the table.
Speaker 3: Other things that kind of mitigate against conflict is having fun,
Speaker 3: playing games, having conversations that make us laugh or think.
Speaker 3: And yes, there can be guidelines that are offered, like
Speaker 3: we have a role at the dinner table. Let's just
Speaker 3: remember that when one person is talking, other people don't
Speaker 3: talk over them or interrupt. Gosh, this is getting a
Speaker 3: little heated. Let's just step away for a moment and
Speaker 3: take a break. Or let's do a quick breathing exercise
Speaker 3: and just calm down for a minute. I thought about
Speaker 3: conflict a lot, and often do at Thanksgiving, which is,
Speaker 3: of course after elections. And in twenty sixteen I was
Speaker 3: worried about my own conflict at the Thanksgiving table, and
Speaker 3: I came up with a game that I've now played
Speaker 3: every Thanksgiving that I call the hat game. And as
Speaker 3: people come in, I have a hat and post it's
Speaker 3: at the table, and I have a prompt, and I
Speaker 3: ask everybody to answer the prompt anonymously. So that first year,
Speaker 3: it was what character in a children's book did you
Speaker 3: most identify or do you most identify with or want
Speaker 3: to be? Or what toy did you most love as
Speaker 3: a child or love now as a child And people
Speaker 3: would answer them. And then I brought the hat to
Speaker 3: the table and pull out the post its, and each
Speaker 3: person tried to guess which person went with which answer,
Speaker 3: and then that person could expound if they wanted. But
Speaker 3: it meant that for like ten or fifteen minutes, we
Speaker 3: had a light hearted, interesting, conflict free conversation.
Speaker 1: Thanks to doctor Anne Fichell and Yan Emmanuel denv for
Speaker 1: walking us through the importance of sharing meal time with
Speaker 1: other people. In the next episode, we'll examine another topic
Speaker 1: raised by the report. Are we becoming less trusting and
Speaker 1: what does that mean for our well being? All that
Speaker 1: next time on the Happiness Lab with meet doctor Laurie Santos.