Poll: How often do you eat your dinner sitting on the sofa?

A recent survey found more and more of us are shunning the dining table in favour of the sofa. We want to know if you do?

Today’s Metro ran a small article stating that according to a survey by sofa maker DFS, more than half of people choose to eat their evening meal on the sofa.

A call to DFS was met with "we don’t ‘ave a press office, sorry", and their twitter feed is dead too... nor can I find the survey on Metro.co.uk. So, I thought we’d run our own poll (see below). And for the sake of argument, let’s assume the stats are true.

The table comes first

The Chef and restaurateur Fergus Henderson once said, "I don’t understand how a young couple can begin life by buying a sofa or a television. Don’t they know the table comes first?" That final sentence became the title of Adam Gopnik’s book about the meaning of food. Gopnik says in the book, “Having made food a more fashionable object, we have ended by making eating a smaller subject… Betrayed by its enlargement, food becomes less intimate the more intensely it is made to matter.”

The benefits of eating together

Over at Simplemarraige.net Jules Clancy gives six benefits of couples eating together at the table, and iDiva.com has an article extolling the weight loss benefits. But perhaps the best sounding evidence comes from The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA), sited on WebMD.com. According to them, eating at the table will bring the following benefits:

Everyone eats healthier meals.
Kids are less likely to become overweight or obese.
Kids more likely to stay away from cigarettes.
They're less likely to drink alcohol.
They won't likely try marijuana.
They're less likely to use illicit drugs.
Friends won't likely abuse prescription drugs.
School grades will be better.
You and your kids will talk more.
You'll be more likely to hear about a serious problem.
Kids will feel like you're proud of them.
There will be less stress and tension at home.

Wow, all that from eating at the table? That’s a pretty big claim. However, I for one do believe that eating properly at the table teaches children manners, patience, and how to eat properly. They’re claims backed up by research from Society for Research in Child Development in their PDF The Family Dinner Table: Implications for Children’s Health and Wellbeing. But could it be that more upwardly mobile and better off parents give their children better food?

Full disclosure

While as a parent I ensure my 3-year-old eats her meals at the table, I must confess that my wife and I do eat the odd meal on the sofa. Mainly foods like pizza (homemade natch, the salt levels in shop-bought pizza are horrific) on a Friday night with a few glasses of wine and Have I got News For You on, or a film. My rule of thumb is that if you need to use a knife as well as a fork to eat it, eat it at the table.

Fill in our poll

What are your thoughts on eating on the sofa? What about the hygiene aspect? Maybe it doesn't matter? Talk to us in the Comments below.

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