Do Americans still say grace at meals? My guess would be not, since I notice that the average American has grown a lot fatter over the last generation. This has happened here in Norway too after most people stopped saying grace. Saying grace was a common behavior when I was a child; in Norway it was called "praying for the food", which caused some confusion since a) the food was already there, or alternatively b) the food was probably beyond rescue. In any case, already in my teens this practice was growing rare outside small conservative sects. And not long after, Norwegians began to grow fatter and fatter until this day.
I am not sure about cause and effect here, actually. I think if I was obese from overindulgence, I might find it hard to commune with the Light at mealtime. Kind of like it is hard to pray before going to bed if there are steadily new people in your bed. But also the other way around, it is probably hard to get ever new people into your bed if you keep praying there. So again, cause and effect is a strange couple. It would be kind of interesting to gather a bunch of obese people and record them saying grace on a regular basis and see what happened to their weight and general health. But I suspect the current government would not fund the research. So how are things over on the west side of the sea?
3 comments:
It pretty much depends on the family. In my experience, if they go to church they usually also say grace at family mealtimes. Also, I think the obesity issue has more to do with the fact that families often do away with the practice of sitting down and eating together. Most people don't think of giving thanks before they dive into the bag for a burger and fries.
But isnt that just a manifestation of the McDonaldization of USA "culture" altogether - summed up in the tile of the book Fast "Food" Nation.
There are now over 13,000 McDonald's in the USA. And what about the other fast food chains.
How many people say there prayers, or grace, when purchasing food, or eating at McDonald's.
Is it possible to even say grace when consuming the now normal standard American diet. Or eating a TV dinner in front of the idiot box in the "living" room. Most of which are essentially packages of toxic chemicals.
As it happens, I do seek the blessing of the Light and the grace to be worthy of the fast food, which I then eat gratefully. Incidentally I eat this type of food very rarely. Are these data points connected? Only science can tell! Or Divine revelation, I suppose, but it seems like a great project for science. "Saying grace and obesity - a quantitative study" sounds great.
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