Dining With Someone Makes The Meal Better

Eating with family and friends and enjoying the food we eat are important to good health and good nutrition.

So important, in fact, that the message should be delivered as part of the coming update of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, according to the Tufts University Diet & Nutrition NewsLetter.

The current guidelines focus on the mechanics of good nutrition: eating less fat and more fruits and vegetables, eating less salt and limiting alcohol consumption.

Now, hopefully, social grace and human interaction will take their place at the table along with the food. Kids may even learn to use forks again.

I love the idea of eating together more often. I’m often quizzed about how to pull this off by families living through split-second timing and refrigerator magnet notes.

Finding room for the family to be a family doesn’t happen by chance. It takes a deliberate effort to set aside time to be together, to talk, to share, to find out whom we’re living with. Revising “Sunday dinner” might be a great place to start.

Singles and empty-nesters face an eating-together problem, too. For many of us, there’s just no dinner partner. So our cooking skills get rusty, and we miss out on the “How was your day?” conversation that makes us feel connected to the human race.

We, too, need to make the effort to connect.

Several months ago, a mixed group of singles and married empty-nesters concocted a counterattack to eating alone. We developed “movie night.”

This isn’t a party in which you grab any old movie off the shelf, make popcorn and order pizza. Nor is it the all-too-common potluck supper.

This is movie night with a theme, put on like those old-fashioned parties in which the host and hostess do everything, so the guests get a night off.

It’s about good food and good cooking, so everything has to be made from scratch. No frozen food. No carryout. No deliveries. Experimenting is encouraged.

The meal is prepared with care, served at a well-set table and lingered over, talked about and praised. Finally, we get around to the theme-matched movie.

So far, we’ve had a trip to New Orleans with “Irma La Douce,” after feasting on jambalaya. Next, we were off to Mexico, enjoying “Like Water for Chocolate” after a dinner of chicken mole.

Another night we visited “Casablanca” and indulged in African pineapple peanut stew. Finally, we traveled with “Shirley Valentine” and enjoyed an array of Greek specialties.

It was an enjoyable way to get through the dark and lonely winter. Now that spring is here, we’ll dream up a new plan for eating together.