Why Eating Together Is Important: The Power of Sharing a Meal

Experts can tell you until they are blue in the face that family dinners and social connection are important for a health and emotional well-being, but sometimes what you really need is personal experience to remember why eating together is important. For me, a combination of bonding with people I don’t know very well over food and missing my own family dinners renewed my belief in the power of sharing a meal.

The Power of Sharing a Meal

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about why eating together is important and how powerful it can be to share meals, both with family and with others. For six years, I served on the Board of Trustees for my sons’ school, which was a meaningful opportunity to serve a community I love and value. One of the traditions with this particular board was that each gathering was kicked off with a “meeting for eating.” Board members each took turns being responsible for providing dinner for the group – some people catered the meal and others cooked it themselves.

As I sat down to these meals away from home, both with people I knew quite well and with others I barely knew at all, it was wonderful to see how the food on the table brings us together—it lightening the mood, it shifting the dynamic, and it strengthening the bonds that we were building.

The food also often became a topic of conversation and led to discovering shared experiences and interests. At one of these dinners, for instance, a friend humorously recounted his childhood when he was the slowest eater in his family and everyone would have to sit and wait for him to be finished before they could move on to dessert. At another, a number of us discussed a shared love of Brussels sprouts. Both of these moments were full of joy and deepened friendships.

Then, at first because of the pandemic and then because new school/board leadership who did not see the value in these “meetings for eating,” the tradition was ended. Instead of gathering to break bread together, we would meet solely for the business side of things. The change in the group dynamic was rapid and striking. It was truly stunning to see how quickly things changed. People no longer had the opportunity to get to know one another outside of board business (which can sometimes be quite contentious) and also didn’t have a chance to learn some of the eccentricities of this specific board’s culture, which meant that goodwill and trust quickly vanished and meetings grew angry and wracked with distrust.

Missing Family Dinners

Ironically, while I enjoyed those “meetings for eating,” having all of those dinners away from my family also posed its own challenges. My younger son, in particular, commented numerous times that I was away for dinner too much (and celebrated when the four of us got to sit down together). And my being out in the evenings also required even more careful coordination between my husband and me over the weekly meal plan.

But, perhaps most unexpectedly, I found that not being home for family dinners left me feeling sort of disjointed at the end of the day. Missing those family dinners made me realize what an anchor to my day they truly were. I found that I struggled to decompress and ended up going to bed later, which then made the mornings a bit more challenging. That’s when I truly realized that family dinners weren’t only good for my kids, they were good for me, too.

Why Eating Together Is Important

As a family dinner expert, I can rattle off all of the facts and figures about the benefits of family dinners and eating with others, but having these experiences demonstrated for me in a more visceral way why eating together is important.

The connections that are built when sharing a meal, whether it is with your family or with others, are powerful. Food is not only meant to sustain and nourish us, but it is also meant to fulfill us. It is intended to be pleasurable and enjoyable and to offer social connection.

Sharing meals is a fundamental component to our physical and emotional well-being. So as we sit down for dinner, whether with family, friends, or colleagues, I hope that we are all able to savor not only the flavors on our palates, but also the connections that we are building.

Want to make your own family dinners easier? Try The Scramble’s family-friendly meal plans and you’ll have access to healthy 30 minute meals that you can share with others.

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