Sarah Kunz of Seattle has been making family dinners for her five children for nearly 25 years. She figured out a formula early on and never deviated from it. “I make one meal and let everyone serve themselves, so every kid chooses which parts of dinner to eat or not.”
Recently, Kunz made pasta with garbanzo beans, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, onions and peppers. One child ate just noodles and a few beans; another ate everything but the artichokes.
“They put back what they don’t want or give it to someone else,” she said. There are always rolls and some canned or fresh fruit on the table, in case someone doesn’t like the main dish. “No complaining, no problems. It’s my favorite part of the day.”
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Serving family-style dishes, where everyone is allowed to help themselves from the food on the table, may diffuse many of the power struggles erupting around what’s for dinner, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, when families are eating more meals at home together.
“Family style is exposure without pressure,” said Anna Lutz, M.P.H., R.D., a dietitian in private practice in Raleigh, N.C., who writes a blog about family feeding challenges called “Sunny Side Up Nutrition.” “Kids see and smell new foods without having someone just plop it down on their plate, which can really raise their anxiety.”
We began serving family-style meals when my 6-year-old was 2, and a very cautious new eater. When I made her plate — no matter how I toiled to create a rainbow of fruit or cut roasted sweet potatoes into heart shapes — she would scream and throw the unfamiliar food on the floor. But if she could observe all the food on the table from a safer distance and watch us taste and enjoy it, she would focus in on the one or two foods she was eager to eat, and sometimes even request a bite of something new, no complicated or artistic plating required.
Switching to family-style meals can come with a learning curve, however, and it doesn’t work exactly the same way for every family.
Family-style meals won’t be an instant fix for picky eaters, but giving kids the power to decide what goes on their plate is often a huge turning point, said Jennifer Berry, an occupational therapist who specializes in feeding problems at her practice in Alexandria, Va. “Allowing a child to have autonomy over their body and feel as if they are part of the collective family experience goes a long way toward making them feel safe. And feeling safe around food takes a great deal of the fire out of the resistance to whatever is being served.”
With that safety, parents need to respect the choices that kids make about how much and which foods they eat — yes, even if that means they take three servings of pasta and none of broccoli.
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Family-style meals can also help relieve tensions for parents who worry that their children are eating too much, or too much of certain foods. “Letting kids serve themselves gets you away from that underlying motive of, ‘I want to get my kid to eat less of this and more of that,’” said Katja Rowell, M.D., a family physician and childhood feeding specialist.
When kids prone to food fixations are allowed to take as much as they want, they can stop operating from what’s known as a “scarcity mind-set,” where they feel compelled to take as much food as possible anytime they get the chance. Instead, they can start to listen to their internal hunger and fullness cues.
Of course, manners are also a factor, but that would need to come after children with a scarcity mind-set get used to eating their fill. But you can set simple rules, like “everyone gets firsts before anyone takes seconds.” Older kids can learn to say, “Does anyone else want more of X before I finish it?”
The biggest complaints that feeding experts hear about family-style meals are that they are messy and use too many dishes. So, let it be known: When I serve family-style meals to my 6- and 2-year-old, I am not using our good serving bowls. I bring pots straight over from the stove or oven and put them down on trivets or dish towels. When I add a side of fruit or shredded cheese, they are still in their plastic containers.
We end up with roughly the same number of dishes we would have if I plated everything in the kitchen, give or take a few serving spoons. (The one exception may be taco night, which is both perfect for family-style meals, since everyone can customize their own, and a nightmare of additional bowls if you get too carried away with topping options.)
On the subject of mess, you also don’t need to hand a toddler the soup ladle. It’s fine to help small children serve themselves, as long as they give permission for food to go on their plate. Start with smaller portions and then add on if you’re worried about kids taking big piles of food they will likely not finish.
Also, not everyone has a dining table big enough to hold everything. But it’s still family style if you line up the food on a kitchen counter and have kids bring their plates over, or even just holler from the stove, “Do you want peas on your plate?” Supercautious eaters may need the control of being able to point out exactly where on their plate the peas should go, but other kids will benefit from being able to decide.
And while we’re in isolation and eating every darn meal at home, there’s no need to do breakfast, lunch and snacks family style, in addition to dinner. “Some foods, like sandwiches or bowls of cereal, don’t lend themselves to it as well,” Lutz said. My husband puts peanut butter bagels on our kids’ plates at breakfast, but adds some fruit for the table to share.
There is one group of kids who may not benefit immediately from family-style meals: Children who haven’t always been able to get enough to eat, either because of poverty or caregivers who restrict them out of concerns about overeating. Dr. Rowell discovered this while working with adopted and foster children, who were often coming to the table with a history of food insecurity. “For these kids, seeing only communal bowls of food can kick them into the anxiety that they won’t get enough; I’ve had foster parents tell me that they end up grabbing and fighting at the table,” she said. “Even in homes where there is enough to eat, you can see a similar dynamic play out among siblings, especially if one child tends to eat more slowly than the others.”
In these cases, pre-plating some or all of the meal may be necessary to reassure the child that they will get their fair share. Giving each child their own portion of lasagna for example, along with the reassurance that they can come back for more, may be less stressful than expecting them to wait patiently for their turn with the shared platter. But salad or other side dishes can still go in the middle of the table to be shared. At my house, we sometimes do this with dessert, giving each girl a couple of cookies directly on her plate so she doesn’t have to worry about a sister going back for a third before she’s had a second.
The key to successfully pre-plating any foods is to make sure your goal is to reduce your child’s mealtime stress, not make them eat less of those coveted foods. It should be clear that more food is available and they are welcome to it. “Some kids just do better with a little more structure, as long as they don’t interpret that structure as pressure,” Lutz said. “Family style is a wonderful tool, but don’t forget that your larger goal is to reduce mealtime anxiety so children can learn new skills and enjoy their food.”
Virginia Sole-Smith is the author of “The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America,” and co-host of the Comfort Food Podcast.
