{"id":3097,"date":"2010-12-19T22:09:11","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T22:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=3097"},"modified":"2010-12-19T22:09:11","modified_gmt":"2010-12-19T22:09:11","slug":"sharing-a-meal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/sharing-a-meal\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharing a meal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I happened to watch <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marksandspencer.com\/MS-TV\/b\/311612031?intid=emtv_0_658103257001_640275165001\">Marks &amp; Spencer&#8217;s new Christmas dinner ad<\/a> on telly the other day (embedding it here doesn&#8217;t seem to be possible).<\/p>\n<p>At first it sounds nice, but listen to what is being said: The uncle gets one starter, but the niece gets another; a turkey for one half of the family, but sirloin on the bone for the other half; two different puddings.<\/p>\n<p>What has happened to the idea of sitting down together to share a meal?  A meal that gives you a shared experience, a meal that brings you all together?<\/p>\n<p>Has the modern concept of individual microwave meals now eroded our culture to the point where people just won&#8217;t compromise and eat anything that isn&#8217;t their favourite meal?<\/p>\n<p>Sharing a meal is an ancient concept in many cultures, and welcoming guests with food (such as the Slavonic <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bread_and_salt\">bread and salt<\/a>) is widespread.<\/p>\n<p>So why are we increasingly getting rid of this?  I know of families that hardly ever eat the same thing or at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>I find it disturbing if this now spreads even to special occasions such as Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I happened to watch Marks &amp; Spencer&#8217;s new Christmas dinner ad on telly the other day (embedding it here doesn&#8217;t seem to be possible). At first it sounds nice, but listen to what is being said: The uncle gets one starter, but the niece gets another; a turkey for one half of the family, but sirloin on the bone for the other half; two different puddings. What has happened to the idea of sitting down together to share a meal? A meal that gives you a shared [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,159,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-en","category-fooddrink"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}