
Eating


The company that eats together
Rebecca Portnoy started thinking about shared meals and came across a memory of closing time in a particular restaurant.
“I had been at a Seattle sushi restaurant at the end of the night, and the leftover sushi was being moved to a communal table for a staff meal,” says Portnoy, an assistant professor of management at WSU Vancouver. “I had worked at restaurants and I was baffled and amazed that they were going to take the time at the end of their shift to eat together.”
When she worked as a waitress, Portnoy usually saw people take off right after their shifts. She wondered, what … » More …

Video: How Feeding Styles Work
Most parents work hard to prepare nutritious, well-balanced meals for their children. But, once the children sit down to eat, what can parents do to help them learn how to eat healthy? What can parents say and do to encourage children to try new foods and to prevent them from overeating?
Research has identified three common feeding styles among parents of young children. By observing families, we have found which of these styles is the most successful in helping children eat healthy.
See how these feeding styles work—or don’t work—in common situations in the home.

Eat your broccoli or no cookie: Feeding styles and childhood obesity
Ever try to get a child to stop munching potato chips and eat some carrots? That push toward healthier foods can sometimes contribute to familial strife, make it difficult for children to tell when they are full, and even increase the possibility of children becoming obese.
“Parents struggle all the time to get their kids to eat the right foods or to try their fruits and vegetables,” says Thomas Power, chair of Washington State University’s Department of Human Development. And a child’s innate ability to determine how much to eat can be compromised in these situations, he adds.
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