An Army of Normal Folks - Guess How Much Family Meals Have Declined By?!

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

You'll have to listen to this edition of Shop Talk to get the answer. Plus, some fascinating data on the impact of family meals on our well-being. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks. Welcome to shoptop number 74, Michael Orr's number. I don't even know if I should have. That was Michael Orr's jersey number in the blind side. Should I ask you this? Do you know what's going on with Michael or in the twoies? Should we talk about this or no? Well, I mean, when you talk about it, I think he's suing them saying he didn't get any money from the movie and clearly he's being misled by some handlers. Yeah. The Tui's did not take any money for Michael War. Yeah. It is sad, though, how the relationships

falling apart. It is absolutely pitiful how the relationship's falling apart. And, oh, I could go deeply into it. He's basically saying they don't love me. They basically just use me. I don't believe that at all. Yeah. And I'm going to tell you something.

Leah and Tui brings a lot of heat on herself and because she is so opinionated. As a fellow Mimphian, she's so opinionated and everything else. But I will tell you, I've met her. She's been nothing but kind to me. But that has nothing to do with the fact that certainly Michael Orr have Barclrest win games. Certainly Michael Orr went to Ole Miss primarily because the Tewis are Ole Miss royalty and all of that. But the Tewis and the Tewish children loved Michael and treated him like a brother and a son.

and they did not take any money from Michael. They, if the very opposite, they gave a lot to Michael War, and whoever's handlers are, advisors are that are having him an attack mode on them right now, to me, I think is really, really sad. Yeah. To be clear, they need no money, too. He's got like 100 or 150 restaurants. I mean, yeah, well, I will 20 seconds say this.

yeah there are people who said that i coached at manassas only to make a movie yeah and that is i mean i was at manassas six years before anybody ever called about any cameras right and while that's very very few people have said that it has been said but vitriol like that can be stirred up and hurt relationships and it has heard of you i think i shot so i kind of feel sorry for not only the Tui's, but also Michael. All of that is noise, and it's a shame. Yeah. I think I saw Chavis defend you once on that online.

I think I saw someone post comments on nasty. I don't. I'm giving, just letting you know I'm paying Chavez some credit that he stuck up for you. I would expect that. I'd stick up for him. Yeah. But I'm glad he did. But, you know, it's, listen, there are people who think we didn't land on the moon.

I could, I could make it rain golden. eggs and we could find somebody who would about the litter all right so it is what it is and we're not going to worry about naysayers and debby downers and all them okay but we are going to talk about family meals and what the american college of pediatricians say about it and i love this topic because before we go to break i'm going to say this the Courtney family as the children will come up even when their friends and when their friends joined us at the dinner table so there's six to 12 we had a rule it's called stack them and before dinner began everybody took their cell phone put at the middle table and stacked them and we're not allowed to touch them or use them during

family dinners i rely on my handheld device a lot because my text my emails and everything is in it And with all I have going on and I'm all over the place and traveling all the time, that thing allows me to be able to be efficient with coaching, running my business, keeping in contact with four kids that no longer live in Memphis, keeping up with leasing, contractors, and everything else I got going on. But I think we can become addicted to them. And I think sticking a device in a child's hand at a young age as their form of media and entertainment is, I think it's a bad practice. I haven't read this yet. Alex has given us to explore together. But when it says family meals, American College of Pediatricians, and I can see some cell phone stuff in here, I think that's probably what we're going to talk about. And I don't know if you've heard this, but when people do that exact thing in the stacking and they go out for dinner,

their friends and the rule is whoever grabs their phone first has to pay them for the meal i love that okay we're going to add that that's beautiful my kids all have jobs now when you guys are all out to dinner yeah yeah yeah i'm going to try to get my kids pay for my meal for once all right so we're going to talk about family meals and what the american college of pediatrician says about it right after these brief messages from our gender sponsors the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com.

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Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife. Listen to Hungry for History, part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to shop talk number 74. My core number. Here we go.

Over the past three decades, family time at the dinner table and family conversation in general has declined by more than 30%. Families with children under the age of 18 were. for having family dinners three to four times per week. That's actually higher than I would have expected. But good. One third of families with 11 to 18 year olds only eat one or two meals a week together. Only one fourth eat seven or more together. The experience at the meal table has also declined in quality with the increase in distractions such as television watching, text messaging, phone conversations, and social media. That's the part. That's the

part right there, listen, we need to have a minimum of five bills together as a family. I get people out for work and business and school functions and games and stuff, but a minimum five. But when you're there, it needs to be family dinner. It's interesting that this thing says the experience of the mill table has declined in quality with the increase of distractions such as television watching, text, much, and phone conversation, social media. There's an easy way to fix that.

Turn off the TV and put the phones up. Barriers to family meals cited by parents include two little time, child and adult scheduling challenges, and food preparation. Most parents, however, say they place a high value on family meals, ranking them above every other activity, including vacations, playing together, and religious services, and helping them connect with their families children. Most wish they had more family dinners. Studies have found that benefits such as maintenance of normal body weight, healthy eating patterns, and less disordered eating are found when

families eat at least three meals per week together. It is also difficult to differentiate the effect of overall quality of child rearing by parents who practice family meals from the benefits of the family mill itself. However, even the most rigid research demonstrates the benefits to be specific to the family table, especially for adolescents who are less likely to experience depressive symptoms if there are more family meals. Researchers have attempted to define the characteristics of family mills that are the most beneficial. One meta-analysis. Which means you combine together all the different research out there on one topic to find out what the trend is. One meta-analysis of 50 studies. Oh, meta-analysis of 50 studies. Okay, one combined,

buying study of these 50 studies found six components to be consistently associated with the nutritional benefits for the children. These characteristics are turning off the television, parental modeling of healthy eating, higher food quality, a positive atmosphere, children's assistance with food preparation, and longer meal duration. As early as 1943, researchers were discussing the benefits of the family table from a sociological and cultural viewpoint. Family table talk is an essential part of the process whereby the family inducts the child into the life of society.

Family meals allow the parents to impart values and traditions, as well as demonstrate appropriate relationships, communication techniques, and problem-solving skills. Family meals are powerful for many reasons. First, meal time impact all of our senses, the sight, touch, taste, and smell of food. as well as listening to family conversation. Family meals offer the opportunity to spend time together,

reconnect after a busy day, communicate with and listen to each other, show values and ideas, and problem-solve. Family meals also contribute to the traditions that tie family together, a special food for a birthday celebration, a favorite place to eat for special occasions, a cultural or ethnic food unique to the family's heritage.

These become traditions to provide meaning and context for children as they grow. Family meals provide structure for the day, allowing children to feel more secured and safe knowing what to expect. They also permit parental monitoring of children's moods. This is important. They permit parental monitoring

of children's moods, behavior, and activities, providing parents with insights to the emotional well-being of their child. When extended to neighbors and friends, family meals allow children to learn to appreciate social interactions, understand the importance of community, and experience different ideas while under the guidance of their parents. The Family Table is one of the very few places that

children can observe their parents, interact, negotiate, solve problems, express emotions, and treat one another with respect. A child's world is mostly spent with peers and teachers. The Family Table gives them a chance to see how adults interact and cooperate. It also leads to improved academics. language development is enhanced it improves family relationships socialization it improves nutrition and decreases obesity decreases screen time and television viewing it decreased risk of drug alcohol and nicotine use it decreased other high-risk behaviors teens who had more frequent family dinners for instance were less likely to engage in sexual activity even after controlling for family connections and other family activities, teens who had more frequent family dinners were less likely to engage in problem behaviors such as physical violence, property destruction, stealing and running away from home. Also, family dinners improved mental health and emotional well-being. So, the question is, with that, which by the way, what a study, why, when we know the data,

and none of this is new. I mean, I know this. This is a meta-analytic thing, but like it said, since early 60s, they've been studying the importance of family dinners. Why, when the American College of Pediatricians are putting out this data, how important family mills are, why in the world do I still see people, sometimes even in restaurants, having a family meal and three of the kids sitting there on their phone? It drives me nuts. Do you allow it? No, I mean, I've no devices. I'm really against devices in general, so mine are pretty young. You know, they're six to 11 years old, so, no, I mean, even all these parents who will let their kids bring in devices into restaurants.

I'll watch kids sit there with, like, a, not even a phone. A tablet, yeah, a tablet. It drives me nuts. Watching a TV show or a cartoon or something at the dinner table and a restaurant. It's worse. It's just rude. I mean, who wants, with the ear plugs in. Or sometimes with no ear plugs, I'll be on the airplane.

I don't know if you experience this, too, they'll play it out loud. And I'm like, ridiculous. But the question is, what are you getting? Why even take your family to dinner? Why not just plop the kid in front of the TV and go do something else? I mean, they're not even listening to or engaging with you. I mean, you are setting your kids up for failure. You're basically saying there is no way this child can learn how to behave.

So we're just going to do this. How about interpersonal relationships? How about learning how about learning how to use a knife and a fork properly so one day when you're at a business dinner, you don't look like a frickin' cromagnon? The all of it. It drives me insane. So besides the fact that I have a personal problem with it, the American College of Pediatricians also says, have family meals together without a family. phone, a tablet, the TV on, the TV tray was the worst invention on the face of the planet, sit at a table, turn the noise off, turn your phones on. When I grew up, if the phone rang and I was

eating dinner, I wasn't even allowed to answer it. Or if I was near it, I could pick up and say, hey, I'm having dinner, I'll call you right back once over, click. I mean, it should be a sacrosanct thing that you have a family dinner with your children without any or options that you get do you know what lisa did we we did good thing bad thing yeah and they i pulled it out of that article i think but they had in there talking about like rose thorne and bud same idea same thing what good thing happened today what bad thing happened to you today and go around and all it does is it just starts conversation it was a good day it was good All the dopey response.

Max would say, the bad thing that happened to be today is I had to play the stupid, good thing, bad thing game. Yeah, I mean, you know, you deal with that. But it's worth it. And I will tell you, our children now as young adults, there's two things their kids are going to do. They're going to do the yard work. And they're going to have family dinners because they now appreciate what that meant for our family dynamic. And none of your kids are lacking words. Yeah.

They're all abundant in their words. That's it. Hey, one thing just to harp on, too, you were stressing technology a lot, and I get it. But a lot of it, too, is just two, having more volume of the family meals. People allow the busyness of life, travel sports, all of these things to get in the way. So making it even just more of a priority in general. Yeah, well, and I said that, five, seven, not one. But that's it.

Alex is right. Shot dot number 74 guys, family meals. If you want to build an army of normal folks, you've got to raise an army of normal folks. And the way you raise an army of normal folks is you teach them. And the best place to teach is at the dinner table. So shop talk number 74, the American College of Pediatrics teaches us what we already know. That the volume of family dinners you have with your children and the quality of those dinners by turning off the noise and the distractions and nundated us every day with TV and tablets and phones.

and actually spending an hour with your family, talking, interacting, and enjoying one another's company. The American College of Pediatrics say that is vital to raising your children healthy and well, both mentally and physically. And I say it's vital to our civility. It's vital to our civics that we do it. So shot top number 74, have more family meals and make the quality of them higher

by turning out the noise. Anything else, Alex? A really cool example of this, too, is also doing your extended family. And so, I don't know if you've heard about this from the Wilson family, but for example, back to when their dad was alive, Kevin's Wilson, his wife

would start having the family meals every weekend. And they may have had, I don't know, the number 40 or something. And Kevin's, you know, Wilson, our friend, has talked about they've still continued it. His wife, Norma, and them do it. And it's like 70 people at these family meals every single week and not everybody's always in town every single week so it doesn't you know but I mean even if you can do it like your broader family you know doing it once a week is a really

beautiful thing and I wish I had my family in town to do it I think that's awesome maybe when we have a house again after all this construction we'll start doing that too and we did we always had I can't tell you how many times our kids would have a friend or two or three and we would just have an extended family dinner, but we would still turn down. And do you know our kids are now in their late 20s or the 30s? Our kids' friends still say, do you still stack them? So, I mean, you know, we had a stack them thing and our kids did it. But it kind of speaks to if that was something they remember, it tells me that maybe

some of those kids didn't experience that at their own family meals. The importance of being uncommon, as you say. Yeah, it's very important to be uncommon. Okay, that's it. Shop talk number 74, have more family meals and make the quality of them matter by turning off the noise. It's good for you, it's good for your kids, good for your family. If you enjoyed this shop talk, please rate it, review it,

share it on social. Tell people about us. If you have ideas for shop talk, you can write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks.us, or you can also email me there if you have good ideas for possible people to highlight on an army of normal folks. I appreciate you guys joining us,

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