ABSTRACT
Family mealtime is, perhaps, the single event during which systemic affect and interaction are most vivid and most available for observation, and thus, also for intervention. Students of human culture have long noted the varied ways and means by which mealtimes are carried out. According to Visser (1986), "food —how it is chosen from the possibilities available, how it is presented, how it is eaten, with whom and when, and how much time is allotted to cooking and eating it —is one of the means by which a society creates itself and acts out its aims and fantasies."
