Food and eating practices are essential in everyday life, as we must eat in order to survive. When putting food and eating into theory, sociologist analyses food system in terms of their symbolic properties and the definition of their social relationship and process, which define them. According to Khare, socio-anthropological perspective on food can be analyses in three approaches: ‘food as a sociocultural context for illustrating the logic and principles of different culture, food as a mediating material and moral system within societies and food as a set of nutriments representing the overlapping work of ecological, biological and cultural systems in human societies’ (Khare, quoting in Lupton, 1996: 9). The preparation, consumption and presentation of food are intricately connected to our social life. This paper will explore more details on the second approach; which is the relationship between food, family and community. It will examine how food consumption habits are fundamental to outline the boundary of a family and the causes and consequences of the decline in number of family meal.

Family is always presented in positive qualities. It always encourages love, trust and intimacy. Home is seen as a place where warmth, tenderness, protection and understanding would be expected from parents; family relationship is divined to provide enduring and continuing emotional support; family is important in our aspect of life because ‘for the child, an introduction to life in the wider society and for the adult, a basis for life in the wider society’ (Fletch, 1966:228). Most importantly, family provides a secure refuge for us from the outside world; the family as a whole would work together to contribute their own continuity thus promotes stability of society. In today’s rough and tumbled industrial world, ‘people need company to share burdens and pleasures,