What's on the dinner table when mom and dad both work?

By Meg Sullivan

In Los Angeles, it's more likely to be a Hamburger Helper concoction and salad from a ready-to-eat bag of greens rather than takeout from a fast-food restaurant.

That's the picture researchers from UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families got in the first academic study to track American families as they made dinner.

"People actually spend quite a fair amount of time cooking, but they're incorporating a lot of so-called convenience foods," said Margaret Beck, a researcher at the center and author of the study, which appears in the current issue of the peer-reviewed British Food Journal. "Some people are just grabbing food kits off store shelves and adding water."

In connection with a larger study, CELF researchers videotaped four days in the home lives of 32 working families in Los Angeles, including their dinner routines, between early 2002 and 2005. The trusty hamburger meal-in-a-box from Betty Crocker figured prominently in the meals of these working families, as did packaged convenience foods from Costco and Southern California-based specialty grocery chain Trader Joe's.

Beck is an archaeologist who has studied cooking routines among traditional cultures today for clues to deciphering culinary remains found in Native American crockery and other artifacts. So she savored every detail she could find in the video footage.

Of the 64 weeknight dinners Beck observed, 70% were completely home-cooked, meaning they were prepared at home, although not necessarily from scratch. Despite recent concern over the rise of fast food and takeout, less than 15% of the families ate dinners consisting solely of takeout or fast foods; only 5% combined takeout food with food prepared at home.

With almost all of the home-cooked meals, families served some sort of packaged convenience food. Frozen entrées (such as stir-fry mixes, potstickers, chicken dishes and barbecued ribs) were the most popular products, followed by vegetables (canned or frozen), specialty breads (ready-to-eat, par-baked or from a mix), canned soup and commercial pasta sauce.

Surprisingly, dinner didn't get on the table any faster in homes that favored convenience foods. Meals took an average of 52 minutes to prepare. In fact, families saved only when it came to the amount of hands-on time spent preparing dishes — and the savings were relatively modest. "People don't spend any less time overall on dinner when they use so-called convenience foods," Beck said. "Families seem to spend a certain amount of time cooking regardless. When commercial items are involved, they just ramp up how elaborate it gets."

There was one added complication in some families involving what their children ate. "Some people don't fight the fight of getting the kids to eat what's being served for dinner," Beck said. "The kids frequently got entirely separate entrees or separate items from the adults, so that adds to the overall complexity of the meal."

Not surprisingly, mothers tended to wear the apron. Of observed dinners, 80% were made by mothers, and this was the case even when fathers were already home from work and theoretically available to pitch in.

"If you're a mom, expect to make all the dinners," said UCLA anthropologist Elinor Ochs, director of the center. "A lot of the traditional gender roles are persisting."

And children didn't help much either. "It makes me sad when I think of people not having this experience," Ochs said. "You lose family and regional traditions."