When Joyce Girtman and her family were consulting an obesity expert at Children’s Hospital Oakland, Calif., they discussed the most basic of questions: What should we eat and how much should we eat? It didn’t occur to them to ask
When Joyce Girtman and her family were consulting an obesity expert at Children’s Hospital Oakland, Calif., they discussed the most basic of questions: What should we eat and how much should we eat?
It didn’t occur to them to ask another central question: “With whom should we eat?”
Freeman knew from his research that, while there are many causes for the spiraling rate of obesity in the United States, the most overlooked one is the decline of the family meal.
Studies suggest that as few as one-third of busy, time-crunched American families eat dinner together most nights.
“Why would we eat together when we’re not hungry at the same time?” one flabbergasted teenager asked when the topic came up on radio talk show recently.
We live in a time and a place that so prizes individuality and busyness that millions of dollars go into research and development to invent meals-on-a-stick and takeout containers that fit into car cup holders. Supermarket shelves are filled with such a variety of microwaveable, single-serving meals that family members can eat what they want when they want it and where they want it — which in ever-increasing numbers means alone in front of a television or computer screen.
“If I had to choose only one thing to do for my children, it would be the family meal,” said Barbara Carlson, co-author of the book “Putting Family First: Successful Strategies for Reclaiming Family Life in a Hurry-Up World” (Owl Books, 2002).
“Parents today tend to see themselves as providers of goods and services to their children” instead of as leaders and teachers. “What’s being lost is the idea that children are citizens of families and communities, part of a whole.”
Joyce Girtman’s family was a band of individual diners connected by a common address. When they showed up at Children’s Hospital last year, Joyce weighed 285 pounds. Leslie, her daughter, weighed 344. The granddaughters, 16-year-old Joanna and 10-year-old Chelsea, weighed 298 and 247, respectively.
Documentary filmmaker Mickey Freeman, who is making a film called “The Weight of Obesity,” watched the four women in the weight-loss program laughing, telling stories about eating a week’s supply of cupcakes on the ride home from the grocery store.
When Freeman filmed them later in Joyce’s Oakland home, he listened to Chelsea talk about how overeating blunted her loneliness and depression. She felt isolated at school because of her weight and, despite her family’s clear affection for each other, she felt isolated at home, too.
“Since the beginning of time, food has always been a catalyst for bringing people together,” Freeman said.
Nightly meals with his own two sons had guaranteed at least one balanced meal for everyone and exposure to a wider variety of foods. But more important, he said, were the conversation and stories that pulled them out of their individual lives and back into their life as a single, supportive tribe.
While technology has revolutionized communications, it also has carved society into millions of one-person islands. People move through the world now with their own portable moats of cell phones and CD players.
“I had never thought about (the connection between family meals and obesity),” said Joyce, who is raising her two granddaughters. “What Mickey told me about family meals made a lasting impression. I said, ‘OK, kids, we’re going to do this.’ It made me feel like I had a purpose in life.”
That was in December. When I visited Joyce and her family recently, they were just sitting down at the kitchen table for a dinner of spaghetti, salad and garlic bread. They say they haven’t had fast food in more than six months.
“I’ve learned sitting at this table that my mom used to get dropped on her head as a baby,” Joanna said, laughing and shooting a look at her mother, Leslie, who lifted an eyebrow and smiled. Leslie lives nearby and joins them for dinner most nights.
For Chelsea, who just graduated from the fifth grade, the kitchen table became the place where she could unload the pain she carried through her school day. “I talk about if I’m jealous of somebody or if somebody says something to me about what I’m wearing,” she said.
In six months of family meals and some increased exercise, Joyce and Leslie look like different people. Joyce has lost 60 pounds. Leslie has lost 61. Joanna has lost 15, and Chelsea 12.
“This has changed my life,” Joyce said. “I wasn’t as family oriented with my grandchildren as I was with my children. I let them live here but basically let them do whatever they liked. Then Mickey came in and made me feel like I needed to fix it.”
As Chelsea began to clear the dishes, her sister took out the dominoes set.
“You ain’t gonna beat me!” Joyce teased. Leslie hooted in response. The two girls laughed. The kitchen, with the cabinets and table and four chairs, seemed too small for the four of them and yet a perfect fit.
Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her e-mail is mailto:joanryan@sfchronicle.com
