For those of you who heard the story this morning on NPR: The Family Dinner Deconstructed (for those who didn't, it's here), it reminded me of something I read yesterday in 250 Meatless Menus and Recipes (1910). The dinner table has always been a place of great comfort in my life; and its honor is not newly celebrated. And so, I would recommend lingering over dinner to every family with young children and old, but I question the modernist contention in the piece this morning that "research" is only a decade old. Maybe "research" is only possible by social scientists, but my guess is that "evidence" for the importance of the table has existed for as long as families have eaten together:

"About a decade ago, research started appearing on the family dinner, and the news was uniformly good.

Children who ate with their families were less likely to do drugs, smoke, have eating disorders or become depressed. They were better at reading, less likely to end up in the hospital for asthma and had better grades. And perhaps most shocking of all, in rare instances they could apparently demonstrate exemplary table manners. (Scientists have been unable to replicate this last finding on a consistent basis, however.)"

Compare the NPR piece to this snippet from Eugene Christian and Mollie Griswold Christian's 250 Meatless Menus and Recipes.

To see the original text, click on the image of the page on the top right.

Democracy of the dining table should be a family 
pride. The table is a place to assemble, a place of 
good cheer, a place to cultivate good manners, to cul- 
tivate hospitality, unselfishness, a place to forget the 
worries of the day, a place to compare notes, to tell 
all that has happened to each and every one ; pride and 
instinct bid us be at our best at the family board. 

For all the grown folks to exercise their rights and 
privileges in these things, and "don't" and suppress the 
child, is to inoculate its mind with the poison of rebel- 
lion, injustice and brute force. 

Every child in the beginning is a little savage. It 
may scratch, fight, bite and throw things around for 
awhile, but it will soon begin to imitate those around 
it; the example, therefore, should be the best. This 
is what we call civilization.