Family meals

This is an excerpt from sacredspace.com that I found really interesting:

Something to think and pray about this week

As we move into Lent we might wonder if fasting has any meaning for us today. It has. It is really asking us to look at our relationship to food and drink. Jesus loved to eat with his friends. Meals were important for him. For families too, meals are a time when children watch and listen to their parents and vice versa. But family meals are in danger of disappearing, what with fast food and the lure of TV, which is sometimes left on even when the family are eating together. Like mobile phones in company, it reduces our presence to one another. For many families a good Lenten resolution would be to have meals together at least once a week, and expose themselves to the need for listening, sitting at peace, knowing how the rest of the family is, and going for slow rather than fast food.