Hi Everyone! Karla Eitel, here. I wanted to share an activity with you that we do in our family at mealtimes.
Expressing gratitude for our food allows us a moment before a meal to reflect on the resources that went into getting that food to our table.
This is a simple family activity that can be added onto other family traditions, like saying a blessing before a meal, or it can be a tradition by itself.
What do we do?
In our family, the tradition goes like this:
First, we all sit down together to share a meal. We wait until everyone is at the table and ready before we start. Once everyone is sitting down, we take a minute to say a blessing, and then we end by saying thanks to the beings that were involved in providing our meal. For example, sometimes we eat yak meat that comes from our friends’ farm. So, we say “Thank you to the Yak for giving its life so I could grow strong”, and then someone will say “and thank you Isaak and Bjornen for taking care of the yak so that it could grow”. And then we might say “thank you carrots for helping me to grow strong” and then someone will add “and thank you sun for helping the carrots grow”.
When we do this, our conversation naturally leads into discussion about where our food comes from and what it takes to make it grow. We talk about the sun, and water, and good soil, and also the people that tend the land and harvest the plants, and the people that bring it to the store so that we can buy it.
Sometimes we come across food that’s a bit more complicated (like Cheetos for example… where do they come from?). In this case, it’s a great chance to talk about what makes up the more processed foods that we eat. For example, with Cheetos, we found out that they were largely made of corn. So, we thanked the corn. But because we had a hard time figuring that out at first, we realized that it’s a food that took a lot of extra work to become what it is.
We don’t make judgments about processed or not processed, we just make an observation and take note. I hope that over time our kids will realize the value of eating things whose ingredients can easily be identified, but that’s a lesson for another day!
Prompts to get you going:
- What thanks can you give for the food on your table and the plants, animals and people who provided it?
- Where did your food come from?
- Did you notice anything about your food that made you ask more questions?
