Putting the Family Back in Dinners.

Research conducted at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University has found that compared to teens who have frequent family dinners (five to seven per week), those who have infrequent family dinners (fewer than three per week) are almost four times likelier to use tobacco; more than twice as likely to use alcohol; two-and-a-half times likelier to use marijuana; and almost four times likelier to say they expect to try drugs in the future.

The full report is below.

My Thoughts…

So I was watching Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares yesterday, and in between Gordon screaming “..YOU FU*KING MUPPET!!!” and “DO YOU CALL THAT A RISOTTO YOU FU*KING DONKEY!?!?!”, he took the time to cut to an interesting segment on what would happen if we ate Christmas Dinner every day of the week i.e. would we get fat, or bankrupt ourselves etc.
One of the interesting points raised was the above research from Columbia University. They only mentioned it very briefly, and so I thought it was maybe worth posting the full report here. The reason I’m getting into this is that it makes total sense and flies in the face of everything we are lead to believe by the media.

It just seems that such a large majority of parents want to find a reason to blame someone else for their child’s actions i.e. “…oh, it must be the video games or TV or rock music or kids they’re hanging around with or advertisements or Britney Spears! THAT’S the reason they’re acting up! They probably need medicating…”

Wine ties into this as maybe if wine and beer were common-place (in moderation) at the family dinner table, it won’t be seen as such a big deal in their later life? Just a thought…