A Message from Dr. Anne Fishel, Executive Director
It has been one of the great adventures of my life to have been part of The Family Dinner Project right from the starting gate and through the fascinating ride of the last 15 years. Little did I know in 2010
when I gathered informally around a round conference table in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a band of people bringing diverse professional experiences in communication, food, marketing, conflict resolution, education, and design that we’d create something that would touch so many people. We were united in our desire to unlock the many scientifically documented emotional, nutritional, educational, and social benefits of shared family dinner for more families to enjoy.
As a family therapist, I hoped that we could make shared mealtime easier and more doable, more fun and more meaningful, so that families could derive some of the same benefits that I try to promote as a clinician—more connection, bonding, and conversation.
We all knew that family dinner is a simple idea but not an easy one. Through talking with hundreds of families at Community Dinners held wherever families gather–in school cafeterias, diners, military bases, libraries, and hospitals –we learned that regardless of region, economic circumstances, or the ages of children, families struggle with the same obstacles to making dinner happen. Then and now, we have tried to build resources that can help with the challenges of families being too tired, overscheduled, busy, distracted by technology, frustrated by a picky eater, upset by conflict at the table, or constrained by tight budgets.
If you are a visitor to our website, you have seen that we’ve created thousands of free resources that have the three “main ingredients” of a great meal: healthy food that doesn’t take too long to make, fun that helps everyone relax and laugh, and conversation that promotes the sharing of feelings and stories.
We’re also proud of our 2019 book, Eat, Laugh, Talk: The Family Dinner Playbook, a team effort which offers 52 weeks of food, fun, and conversation organized around work-arounds for the most common challenges to family meals. We’ve been excited to expand upon that work with the collections of resources we’ve created to help families with special challenges, like our Welcoming Table resources for kids with feeding, behavioral, and sensory issues; or our special sets of resources for Thanksgiving, Holidays, Technology at the Table, Youth Sports, Picnics, Family Breakfasts, and Back to School.
Finally, after years of being synthesizers of other researchers’ scholarly work, we have begun making our own contribution to the scientific literature, with one paper published this year about how Covid-19 expanded the family dinner table, and another in the works about predictors of family dinner frequency.
The most joyful part of this ride has been seeing the creative ways that our partners implement our programs and resources to suit the communities they work with. And, since everyone has to eat, it’s been a thrill to work with the wide variety of organizations who resonate with our mission. Here are a few recent highlights:
- Purdue University’s Center for Families created a state-wide initiative to promote the benefits of family dinner with distribution of our resources to 84 of 92 counties in Indiana.
- Genesis Garden, a partner in Macomb, Illinois, with a focus on addressing housing crises in Western Illinois hosts Community Dinners because “shared meals at a table increase resilience.” One such dinner featured foods that protesters used during the Civil Rights Movement, with conversation prompts about how to stand up for your friends and how to accept others who are different without resorting to stereotyping.
- The Revere Food Pantry near Boston delivers plant-based food to clinic patients as part of their “Food as Medicine” program and includes TFDP resources to promote the mental health benefits of shared mealtime.
- A prison system in Massachusetts used our Parent Workshops and Community Dinners to build a program for incarcerated women when they are getting ready for release back to their families.
- A researcher at Mt Sinai hospital in New York City is currently using our resources for a study about cooking and mealtime interventions for patients with early dementia and their caregivers.
- Pizza to the Polls, a national nonprofit that provides free pizza to people waiting on long lines to vote, used our resources during the 2024 elections to encourage conversation and fun during those long waits.
- The Psychiatry Academy at Massachusetts General Hospital created a CME-accredited Cooking Show for mental health professionals, with The Family Dinner Project as a co-host.
I’d also like to share a bit about how the 15 years has gone using numbers: Our website has received almost 4 million visitors since the start. We’ve been featured or interviewed in more than 125 media outlets, been guests on dozens of podcasts (and hosts on 10 of our own new podcast episodes), and we have about 80,000 social media followers. Our community programs have been rolled out in more than 30 states across the US, and we’ve given talks and presentations all over the world, from Saudi Arabia to Nebraska, to parents, educators, health professionals, and workforces at nonprofits and corporations.
Looking ahead to the next 15 years, we have goals and dreams that are well within our grasp and some that are bolder. We want to continue our mission of translating all of our tip sheets, programs, and printable resources into Spanish, and would like to add other languages as well. We are going to make available our trainings on video so that more organizations can learn how to implement TFDP programs in their communities. We hope to continue to contribute to the research literature with studies about what helps families have more and better dinners.
We’re in the midst of developing new resources for families around identifying, preventing, and dealing with eating disorders, and another set of mealtime interventions for families caring for a loved one with dementia. And we hope to develop a new toolkit for pediatricians to share with their patients’ families. We have plans to add more video and audio content to make our resources more accessible for everyone. We hope that the message–sharing meals with others is beneficial to kids and adults alike– will resonate across the land.
Finally, and most importantly, we are so grateful to all our partners, donors, and individual families who champion shared mealtime, spread the word, and support their own and other families in the mission of having more and better family dinners. Thank you also to my small but mighty, nimble team at The Family Dinner Project who bring creativity and dedication to the work, and to the helpful support of MGH’s Psychiatry Academy where we are based.
Here’s to many more years of food, fun, and conversation. Thanks for being a part of The Family Dinner Project.
–Dr. Anne Fishel
Listen to our latest podcast episode!
We sat down with researcher Micah Kaats, co-author of the new global study examining the impact of shared meals on happiness. Listen to what Micah has to say about the study’s findings and his own observations about the data on eating together!
Food
We asked Micah to tell us what he’d serve if he invited friends to share a meal with him. Check out the recipe for his special salad with arugula, apples, and goat cheese!
Apple and Arugula Summer Salad
Fun
In honor of the 15th anniversary of The Family Dinner Project, we’re sharing an update to our most-clicked dinner game of all time.
110 Would You Rather? Questions
Conversation
From the earliest days of the project, our conversation jars have been a mainstay of community dinner events and family tables alike. Grab these printables to make your own!
May we ask for an anniversary gift?
The Family Dinner Project is a nonprofit program, and our work depends upon the support of donors and friends. If you’ve enjoyed our free resources, and are able to make a gift of any size to help keep them coming, we would appreciate your support!