As it says in Li Chi: Book of Rites, written in China in the 1st century BC: “The ruin of states, the destruction of families, and the perishing of individuals are always preceded by the abandonment of the rules of propriety.”
By propriety, I refer in particular to the inability of the British nation to sit down for a proper meal at home. The lack of a family dinner leads inevitably to a lack of manners and a dearth of vegetables, followed swiftly by childhood obesity, social excommunication and certain death.
The state fears this. It knows that the modern, well-coordinated child grows up with a spoon in her right hand and a remote control in her left. The Government knows that meat and two veg actually means eating a Pot Noodle Lamb Hot Pot while vegging out in front of Big Brother.
Although much cooking is observed on screen, little action is taken in the home. It is now a lonely art, involving the lukewarming of a ready meal, which is eaten alone with imaginary friends on MySpace or Facebook. The empty feeling afterwards is known as microwave melancholia.
So, gathering a family round a table more than a couple of times a week is like herding terriers, but it should be compulsory for the following reasons:
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1) Tremendous, long-running feuds can be conducted at dinner.
2) Children may be lulled into a false sense of security and release secret information.
3) American studies show children who eat family dinner have better exam results.
4) There is a chance that peer pressure will force a picky eater to try something weird.
5) Manners of some sort can be learnt.
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I have just read Margaret Visser’s The Rituals of Dinner, about the history of table manners. It proves that the rules of propriety have always been variable. The Scots, for instance, were in the habit of standing up to eat porridge and, in the early 19th century, spaghetti was eaten without utensils. Of course, there were still rules: “Raise strings in your right hand, throw back your head, then lower them, dextrously, with dispatch and without slurping, into your open mouth.”
The family dinner need not be dull and stuffy, with such examples to follow.
It is fortunate, then, that Ed Balls, the Minister for Child Obesity, is doing his best to encourage round-table eating. He is making cookery classes compulsory in all schools by September. He wants the public to “e-mail in classic dishes likely to appeal to teenagers”. But teenagers only associate the word “food” with texting “large pepperoni” to Domino’s. There’s something slightly hopeless-sounding about it all, especially when schools are bringing in metal detectors to find pupils’ knives – and not of the Sabatier sort.
Yet I am behind compulsory cooking, and not GCSE Food Technology, which is all about products, packaging and poisoning rather than eating. My ten-year-old son has been cooking for two years at school, and he is now a reliable sous-chef, comfortable with cleavers. In class, he made a pumpkin risotto that I served at a dinner party without anyone guessing, and a Japanese parent came in to teach sushi-making (well, this is North London). What’s not to like?
Minister Balls is also dictating that there will be five hours of “organised exercise” imposed on each child. I am rather hoping for something Communist-style: assembly at dawn, ill-fitting uniforms, a loudspeaker issuing rousing, martial music, and simultaneous arm movements.
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But can state intervention change our nasty, ingrained habits? In principle, I am desperately keen on family meals; in practice, I shout, “Microwave it yourself. I’m in the bath and never coming out,” or “What do you mean, ‘A bagel’s not dinner’?”
I have a schizophrenic attitude to food – I love it when someone else is cooking (especially child labour), but I find it tedious when it’s me, again. Each week, blearily, on a Sunday night, I raise one wine-shaky finger and press the “Favourites” button on the Tesco home-delivery website, ensuring the burgers-bananas-beans survival cycle begins again.
I fluctuate wildly between food neophobia (the comfort of “Favourites”) and neophilia (a desire to forage widely, to try everything new – a desire that has made Britain’s national dish chicken tikka masala).
But when I’m busy, I wear the same running gear all day, fail to run at all, and indulge in neophobia. According to Visser’s book, monotonous eating has some serious followers, such as Wittgenstein, who refused to waste intellectual time on the subject. His philosophy was that he didn’t mind what he ate, so long as it was always the same. For many years, he lived on Swiss cheese and rye bread. His family values, obviously, suffered.