Parents can cut the chances of their children getting fat simply by keeping them longer at table. Just three extra minutes at a family mealtime could help prevent child fatness. The reasons might lie in communication and the importance of a scheduled mealtime.

Dr Barbara Fiese said, “Children, whose families have a 20-minute meal over four times a week, weigh lighter than kids who leave the table after15 to 17 minutes. Over time, those extra minutes per meal add up and become really powerful.”

Researchers studied 200 family mealtimes, testing the influences of mealtime habits of families with children in primary school. They found that families, who said that shared mealtimes were an important part of family life and had special meaning for them, were less likely to have fat children. Similarly, families who talked more together and communicated more positively during the meal, were more likely to have healthy-weight children.

Teaching families how to make full use of family mealtimes was a wise idea. “This is something we can do and teach. It’s also important to recognize the increasing differences of families and their complex living schedules that may challenge(挑战) their abilities to plan ahead and set some time to communicate with each other,” said Dr Fiese.

Families in poorer US neighborhoods faced more problems, including poor chances of getting healthy food. But even so, regular high quality family mealtimes made a difference to the children’s weight. Dr Fiese said, “Three to four extra minutes per meal will make a healthy weight more possible.”

Cultural rules determine every aspect of food consumption. Who eats together defines social units. For example, in some societies, the nuclear family is the unit that regularly eats together. The anthropologist Mary Douglas has pointed out that, for the English, the kind of meal and the kind of food that is served relate to the kinds of social links between people who are eating together. She distinguishes between regular meals, Sunday meals when relatives may come, and cocktail parties for relatives and friends. The food served symbolizes the occasion and reflects who is present. For example, only snacks are served at a cocktail party. It would be inappropriate to serve a steak or hamburgers. The distinctions among cocktails, regular meals, and special dinners mark the social boundaries between those guests who are invited for drinks, those who are invited to dinner, and those who come to a family meal. In this example, the type of food symbolizes the category of guest and with whom it is eaten.

In some New Guinea societies, the nuclear family is not the unit that eats together. The men take their meals in a men’s house, separately from their wives and children. Women prepare and eat their food in their own houses and take the husband’s portion to the men’s house. The women eat with their children in their own houses. This pattern is also widespread among Near Eastern societies.

Eating is a metaphor that is sometimes used to signify marriage. In many New Guinea societies, like that of the Lesu on the island of New Ireland in the Pacific and that of the Trobriand Islanders, marriage is symbolized by the couple’s eating together for the first time. Eating symbolizes their new status as a married couple. In U.S. society, it is just the reverse. A couple may go out to dinner on a first date.

Other cultural rules have to do with taboos against eating certain things. In some societies, members of a family group, are not allowed to eat the animal or bird that is their totemic ancestor. Since they believe themselves to be descended from that ancestor, it would be like eating that ancestor or eating themselves.

There is also an association between food prohibitions and rank, which is found in its most extreme form in the caste system of India. A caste system consists of ranked groups, each with a different economic specialization. In India, there is an association between caste and the idea of pollution. Members of highly ranked groups can be polluted by coming into contact with the bodily secretions, particularly saliva(唾液),of individuals of lower-ranked castes. Because of the fear of pollution, Brahmans and other high-ranked individuals will not share food with, not eat from the same plate as, not even accept food from an individual or from a low-ranking class.

Ahh... Fish, chips and mushy peas! There is nothing more British than fish and chips. Freshly cooked, boiling hot fish and chips, topped with salt and seasoned with vinegar, packed in newspaper and eaten out-of-doors on a cold and wintry day — it simply cannot be beaten!

【小题1】

Both Lancashire and London claim to be the first to invent this famous meal. Chips were a cheap, basic food of the industrial north while fried fish was introduced in London’s East End. 【小题2】 So was born our national dish of fish and chips!

【小题3】 Mr. Lees sold fish and chips from a wooden shelter in the market. Later he moved the business to a permanent shop across the road. However in London, it is said that Joseph Malin, a Jewish immigrant, opened a fish and chip shop in Cleveland Way within the sound of Bow Bells in the 1860s.

Fish and chip shops were originally small family businesses, often run from the front room of the house and were commonplace by the late 19^th century. Through the latter part of the 19th century and well into the 20th century, the fish and chip trade expanded greatly to satisfy the needs of the growing industrial population of Great Britain. Fish and chips became vital to the diet of the ordinary people. 【小题4】

In 1999, the British consumed nearly 300 million servings of fish and chips. That equates to six servings for every man, woman and child in the country. 【小题5】 That’s eight for every one Burger King restaurant, making British Fish and Chips the nation’s favourite take-away.