Column: Hattie’s Hangout

What’s the best food you have ever eaten? Where were you when you ate it? Who was with you? 

Tasty food often comes with an enjoyable memory that expands beyond the actual food you were eating. Maybe you were in a different country or surrounded by your closest friends. 

Food brought you there and now you have a lasting memory that makes your stomach grumble when you think about that delicious flavor. 

Food is much bigger than the act of eating. Food means people. The people who made the food and who you eat the
food with. 

No matter where you live in the world or what economic class you reside in, everyone has a common need for food. A group of people, no matter
how different they are,  can come to a table with nothing in common except for their desire to fill their stomachs up with delicious grub. 

Unfortunately, food has become less of an experience and more of a need for convenience. 

Instead of families gathering every evening at the dinner table to discuss their days and what they have learned, parents and children eat at different times at opposite ends of the house, neglecting the influence of family
dinners. 

Time spent around the dinner table can often be a key factor in a child’s communication development. It starts in the home. It starts with food. 

How do we get back to the time when food was a unifier? It starts with reshaping the way we eat food. Society has succeeded in cheapening the value of food when its motive for eating is convenience instead of community. 

Something special happens when people congregate in a kitchen laughing and sharing stories as they cook a meal that they will eat together. This is where people share recipes and reminisce and talk about what they are
passionate about. 

Imagine a Super Bowl party lacking the most important ingredient: food. That’s what I would call a disaster. 

Food is a necessity for two main reasons: health and humanity.

Let’s learn how to break bread together again.