“People don’t value the dinner table as much as they should!” says furniture company
Unstoppable rise of the TV dinner: Less than half the UK’s families now regularly sit down at the table to eat
Less than half of the UK’s families sit down at the dinner table together at mealtimes, research has found.
A study has revealed that only 49 per cent of families eat their evening meals at the dinner table every day, as TV dinners become increasingly commonplace.
Researchers polled 713 parents to discover their mealtime habits, and found more than one in 10 (14 per cent) of families revealed that they never eat meals together and opt to sit in front of the television.
The days of the large family meal around the dinner table are, sadly, dead – replaced instead by the communal gathering around X Factor or Strictly, presumably. The trend has become so profound that even ‘researchers’ have noticed it:
The abandoning of the dinner table is being put down to a growing number of people eating while watching TV, with researchers calling for a ‘dinner table revival’.
Then again, there ought not to be anything surprising here, given who those ‘researchers’ were:
Simon Furzey of the furniture company Metrofurniture.co.uk who conducted the survey in collaboration with Babies.co.uk, said: ‘While these concerns have been around for years, today the family mealtime faces a three-pronged attack from television, technology and relentless work schedules…
‘We would like to see a ‘dinner table revival’ where parents turn off the TV and move mealtimes away from the couch.
Given that you sell dinner tables, Simon, I’m quite sure you would like to see that, yes.