Food: Fun, Friends and Fulfillment: Positive Psychology and Paladares

By Bridget Grenville-Cleave - June 26, 2009

Who was it that said that the family which eats together stays together?

Sharing a meal with family or friends is as much a social event as it is a nutritional one. In some reports, shared meals are recognized as a sign of a strong social unit.

But often we hear how infrequently today’s families eat together at the same time and at the same table. Parents are busy working, get home late, and don’t have the time (or energy) to go round the supermarket and cook. Kids eat snacks on-the-go when hunger pangs strike, then don’t feel like tucking into anything more substantial when it’s put on the table. A favorite TV show begins just as food is dished up, so one or more members of the family misses the meal to watch it.

Sounds familiar? Certainly it’s a picture of family life commonly painted in the media.

To some extent, the value of eating together is backed up by research. The UNICEF report into children’s well-being in rich nations suggests the number of times that children and their parents ate meals together was a measure of the quality of family relationships.

Mealtimes are now a priority in my family. Assuming both parents are home, we sit and eat dinner together every day (I’d say it works out about 80% of the time). Sitting down together is an important occasion: we talk about what’s been going on for each of us during the day, we make plans and solve problems, we share jokes, have fun and generally enjoy each other’s company. But it hasn’t always been this way – we chose to make it a priority.

Paladares

Today, BBC radio’s Food Program focused on paladares. A paladar is a small, family-run Cuban restaurant which traditionally sprang up in response to official, state-controlled restaurants. Unlike official restaurants, paladares aren’t advertised, so you hear about them by word–of-mouth. The Food Program featured ten secret paladares , not in Cuba, but in the northeast of England, organized as part of Newcastle’s EAT! festival.

The festival’s organizer, Simon Preston, found ten chefs of different nationalities willing to open their homes and cook authentic food for a small group of complete strangers. The cuisine ranged from Colombian to Chinese, Nigerian to Pakistani. When guests bought tickets (very reasonably priced at £15 per head), they could choose which cuisine they preferred but the venue remained secret until a few hours beforehand — they wouldn’t know their fellow diners, or the host, until they met them at the venue.

One guest interviewed on the BBC program commented on the courage of the host cooks in taking on such a challenge. On reflection I realized both hosts and their guests were demonstrating a great many character strengths:

Bravery, kindness, and authenticity: The host cooks to open up their homes, take time to prepare and cook food for strangers, are true to themselves and to their own cultures; this demonstrates courage, kindness, and authenticity.

Curiosity and open-mindedness: For the guests this was a journey of exploration, a voyage into the unknown. They would be trying something completely new and different. They needed to be inquisitive and open to new experiences, to have a sense of adventure, sampling unfamiliar food and cultures and meeting total strangers at a shared table for the evening.

Vitality, joy and pleasure: The atmosphere of each dinner party was zestful, energetic and full of pleasure. Some host cooks wore traditional national costume, others played traditional music. The Cuban host even treated his dinner party guests to an impromptu salsa lesson.

The tradition of paladeres reflects the three routes to well-being outlined in Martin Seligman’s book Authentic Happiness . Sharing a home-cooked meal with people you haven’t met before can be a meaningful and engaging experience, as well as pleasurable and fun. And not only that: it reflects the importance of building human connections, the heart of psychological well-being.

I shan’t be looking at meal-times in quite the same way from now on.

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