Love at the Dinner Table: Nourishing Connections through Shared Meals
by Jeremiah Centrella, Wolfella Food Company
Photo courtesy of Wolfella Food Company
This year our family is trying something new - a resolution to eat a sit-down dinner together at least three times a week. At least once every two weeks, we’ll invite at least one other family to join us.
The science behind this resolution is astounding. Cooking and eating family-style meals together as a family has life-long positive results for families, individual parents, children, and groups.
We didn’t know any of the science when we set out to test Wolfella Food Company’s meal offerings. For me personally, I just knew that a good dinner at home with family and/or friends boosted me for weeks. There would always be moments of reflection and appreciation for the people at the table and a feeling of love and warmth that couldn’t be recreated any other way. It started when I was a very young child where most of my positive memories revolve around cooking, farming and preserving our own vegan food together as a family.
“We first learned of the science behind the feeling from Bridgetown Baby Founder Merriah Fairchild, who highlighted that, just as breastfeeding causes nursing parents to release oxytocin (the “love” hormone), eating together also causes the release of oxytocin.”
I couldn’t explain why, but I knew that the deep feeling of connection seemed to happen best over meals served family style. I developed an aversion to eating buffet or plated style that was so strong I once forced the group I was with to set a 16 person table out on a boulder field on a rafting trip just to try to re-create that sense of connection (I’ve learned to go with the flow a bit more since then).
We first learned of the science when meeting with the founder of Bridgetown Baby, Merriah Fairchild, who highlighted that, just as breastfeeding causes nursing parents to release oxytocin (the “love” hormone), eating together also causes the release of oxytocin. It was a lightbulb moment that sent us down the rabbit hole to learning about the impact of eating together on mental and physical health, family connection, child development, group bonding and more. We are also searching out the science on how to prepare and serve meals in a way that maximizes the benefits and what ingredients have proven ability to increase oxytocin. We continue to be astounded by what we’re learning. Turns out there is an immense amount of reputable scientific research on the subjects.
From what we’re learning, it seems that eating family style meals together should be considered a breakthrough therapy and preventative medicine for a huge amount of what ails us - from stress, anxiety and depression, healthy relationships with food for children and adults, children’s self-confidence and ability to handle bullying, family bonding and marriage success, to group problem solving, and so much more.
Most likely you’ve been at a dinner at some point where you felt the surge of love and felt like you were friends with the people there afterwards. Merriah was on to something. Eating a family-style meal together does cause the release of oxytocin, sometimes at levels similar to those that a mother releases while breastfeeding. Oxytocin is the “love hormone” that triggers bonding and connection. On the flip side, eating together significantly reduces stress and provides an outlet to talk about life’s daily challenges in a healthy way. Surprisingly, 80% of surveyed teenagers say that family meals are the time of day that they are most likely to enjoy talking to their parents. Eating family meals together is in our DNA and appears to be a critical part of how we evolved as a species and were/are able to process our existence, problem solve and establish bonds unlike other species.
But, as you probably guessed, the benefits of eating together aren’t always present just because we are chewing our food in the same room. The benefits come from the human connection that exists when we collaborate and connect around our food. Studies show that eating family-style, where we sit at the table, cut into the casserole or turkey, and pass food is far better at helping develop bonds. It’s a ritual that loosens us up and connects us to the people around us. I’ve always loved the sound of someone saying “can you pass the x.” I’m filled with warmth just thinking about it.
Other rituals that go along with family-style meals are also important. Growing up we would always hold hands and someone would say a prayer of thanks. These prayers and holding hands are immensely powerful at connecting us and putting us in a grateful mindset. We aren’t religious today, but can still create this kind of connection through a short story, poem or a cheers at the beginning of a meal. Speaking of cheers and clinking glasses, it’s not just something for parties. The ritual of touching glasses while making eye contact and saying something positive about the people at the table is a powerful way to connect people – the forced eye contact alone has enormous benefits and will likely lead to more open and meaningful conversation. We’re excited to let our kids lead on saying a cheers just like my parents had us kids say prayers when I was young. Everyone will have their own rituals around eating together - maybe it’s a question to start conversation (“how was your day?” or “what was the best thing that happened today?”) or it’s a bad joke - and you still get much of the benefits without any kind of forced ritual. It’s interesting to know that rituals around eating together were critical to our evolution as a human species and there’s science behind why we do things like make eye contact when we cheers.
Our mission is to help people connect over family-style meals at home.
When we first started testing Wolfella we knew in our hearts and from experience that in order to help people connect over meals, those meals needed to be easier to plan and cook. Coordinating a multiple course meal where the pieces fit together and the food stays interesting is too much work for the average two-working-parent household (and the burden still falls massively disproportionately on women). After testing for six months, we’re now very clear on our mission - and we’ll be continuing to improve, adapt and iterate to achieve it.
So much of the commercialization of family meals led us away from the core purpose and benefit around meals together. Our mission isn’t to help people set the perfect table and impress (read “intimidate”) others with set, setting and food. It’s also not to create the most convenient solution. Even if we can make heat-and-eat options, we’ll always include a component that requires you to participate as a cook because that part is important to the benefits we want you to have. Our mission leads us to help you create food that will facilitate the many benefits of cooking and eating together, cause the release of oxytocin, and lubricate conversation and connection - but in a way that is achievable in today’s busy world.
As we continue to search out the best ways to enhance the benefits of family meals, we’ll take you on this learning journey and provide a few articles in our emails to help. I might suggest just starting how we did and Google “the science behind eating together” or “scientific benefits of eating together.” You will find pages and pages of reputable articles and studies that show a massive range of positive benefits. To help you start, here are a few that help back-up what I’ve been talking about:
How Eating With Others Nourishes Us In More Ways Than One (Washington Post) - a good summary of both the culture, history and science around eating together today.
7 Science-Based Benefits of Eating Together as a Family (Parents Magazine) – sets out 7 of the benefits of eating together for children and families, with links to the scientific studies or articles that back up each.
The Hidden Power of Eating Family-Style Meals (Psychology Today) - summarizes three studies that show that people who share plates of food (rather than getting individual plated meals) are more likely to cooperate well together afterwards.
Breaking Bread – The Functions of Social Eating (National Institutes of Health) – study summary showing that communal eating, whether in feasts or everyday meals with family or friends, is a human universal, yet it has attracted surprisingly little evolutionary attention. Data from a UK national stratified survey tests the hypothesis that eating with others provides both social and individual benefits, and the author shows that those who eat socially more often feel happier and are more satisfied with life, are more trusting of others, are more engaged with their local communities, and have more friends they can depend on for support. Evening meals that result in respondents feeling closer to those with whom they eat involve more people, more laughter and reminiscing, as well as alcohol. A path analysis suggests that the causal direction runs from eating together to bondedness rather than the other way around. Conclusion: social eating may have evolved as a mechanism for facilitating social bonding.
Why the Family Meal is Important (Stanford Children’s Hospital) - summary of the benefits and how to hold family meals to maximize them.
The Importance of Eating Together (Atlantic Magazine) – sets out some of the benefits and the history and data of why Americans are so far off the mark when it comes to eating together.
Food Sharing Linked to Increased Oxytocin Levels in Chimpanzees (NIH study) - Summarizes how humans excel in cooperative exchanges between unrelated individuals. Although this trait is fundamental to the success of our species, its evolution and mechanisms are poorly understood. Other social mammals also build long-term cooperative relationships between non-kin, and recent evidence shows that oxytocin, a hormone involved in parent–offspring bonding, is likely to facilitate non-kin as well as kin bonds. In a population of wild chimpanzees, we measured urinary oxytocin levels following a rare cooperative event—food sharing. Subjects showed higher urinary oxytocin levels after single food-sharing events compared with other types of social feeding, irrespective of previous social bond levels. Also, urinary oxytocin levels following food sharing were higher than following grooming, another cooperative behaviour. Therefore, food sharing in chimpanzees may play a key role in social bonding under the influence of oxytocin. We propose that food-sharing events co-opt neurobiological mechanisms evolved to support mother–infant bonding during lactation bouts, and may act as facilitators of bonding and cooperation between unrelated individuals via the oxytocinergic system across social mammals.
Oxytocin and Overeating (Fitness Genes) - two studies show that oxytocin helps regulate our eating and reduces overeating and the rewards signals that come from eating unhealthy sugars.
The Wolfellas (Margaret Wolf and Jeremiah Centrella) believe passionately that sharing meals with others, whether between couples or entire cultures, is the foundation of good connection and strong community. Wolfella Food Company’s selection of diverse, delicious, restaurant quality home-delivered flash frozen kits make it easy to quickly create scrumptious multi-dish meals for loved ones. Learn more here.
