At the Table
Week Four and reclaiming the magic of our daily meals
As a working mom, I often find myself mindlessly shoveling lunch into my mouth so I could get through my task list and finish work in time attend to my kids. This scenario probably sounds familiar to many of you, but in these rushed moments, we lose something precious. The simple act of eating—one of humanity’s most fundamental rituals—becomes just another thing to check off on our endless to-do lists.
So, this week is for all of you desktop diners and anyone who would like to transform hurried meals from moments of daily despair into opportunities for renewal and meaning.
Meals hold profound cultural and social significance in virtually every society, and it’s not hard to understand why. While eating is fundamentally about survival, we humans have transformed eating far beyond just consuming calories to fuel necessary metabolic activities. Across cultures and throughout history, people have elevated the simple act of eating into an art form, a way of social bonding, and a spiritual practice. From elaborate food preparation to intricate table etiquette, our approach to eating exemplifies humanity’s deep need for ritual and meaning in daily life.
Did you know that mealtime rituals can even make your food taste better? Researcher Kathleen Vohs, PhD, from the University of Minnesota, explored this fascinating idea through a series of experiments. In one study, participants were asked to eat a chocolate bar after following a set of detailed instructions, such as how to unwrap and break the chocolate bar, while another group received no instructions. The results indicated that the participants who followed the detailed instructions or performed the ritual rated the chocolate as tasting better. They were even willing to pay more for it than the group who didn’t follow any instructions. A second study showed that “random gestures do not boost consumption as much as ritualistic gestures do.” In other words, structured, intentional, repetitive, and multisensory actions can improve the eating experience. (As if we need an excuse to smell chocolate!)
Why Meals Are Ritual Gold
Meals already contain everything a good ritual needs:
They repeat, multiple times a day.
They engage the senses—taste, smell, texture, temperature.
They naturally interrupt the flow of our day.
They offer moments of connection, whether we’re eating with others or alone.
The great thing about meals is that they don’t need to be added to your ritual practice . . . they’re already there, quietly waiting to be claimed.
Deliberate dining isn’t about perfection. It’s not about eating slowly all the time, using special plates, or sitting down to candlelit dinners every night, although candles to seem to make everything a little better!
It’s about marking the moment: saying a blessing before eating or a pause before the first bite. Even ten seconds of intention can transform an exercise in fueling necessary metabolic activity into ritual.
I’ve written before about rituals don’t need to be rational and might be even more powerful when they are not. Anthropologists call this causal opacity: there is no logical connection between the action and expected outcome (e.g. knocking on wood), but we still do it anyway. Additionally, DIY rituals may be more powerful than those handed down to you due to what’s known in behavioral psychology as the “endowment effect,” which suggests that ownership of an item causes people to value it more than something randomly given to them.
One of my favorite examples of this lives at my own dinner table. When my kids were young, they started shouting “Gorgeous! Diamond!” at the end of our dinner blessing. To this day, none of us can remember why, it makes no sense, and yet . . . we still say it, every single time!
But that’s ritual— it’s irrational, but it’s ours . . . and somehow, marks the meal as something more than just eating.
Small Ways to Ritualize a Meal
If you’re wondering where to begin, choose one small anchor—just one.
Maybe it’s pausing before the first bite and taking a single breath.
Maybe it’s dedicating the meal to someone you love, someone who grew the food, or even your future self.
Maybe it’s choosing one meal a day without a screen.
Or maybe it’s a tiny, repeated gesture: lighting a candle, placing your hand on the table, saying the same phrase every time you eat, even if it is nonsensical.
Intention, reverence and repetition are what can turn everyday actions into rituals, not grandeur or perfection. Ritual works because it’s reliable . . . not because it’s elaborate.
This Week’s Invitation
Between now and next week, I invite you to choose one meal a day and make it deliberate. Not perfect or photo-worthy, just intentional. Then notice:
How does it affect your nervous system? How does it affect your digestion?
How does it change the pace of your day?
How does it shift your relationship with nourishment?
Next week, we’ll turn to threshold rituals and mindful moments—the small transitions that quietly shape how we move through our days. Until then, may you eat well, intentionally, and with joy in your heart!