Like the proliferation of cupholders in cars and fast-food outlets on highways, more opportunities for snacking and casual dining are being built into today’s new homes. Builders say it’s just a reflection of modern lifestyles, but obesity experts call the trend downright dangerous to Americans’ health.
A minimum of two eating areas — a casual dining space and breakfast bar in the kitchen and a separate room or space for formal dining — are “must haves” in surveys of new home buyers. But many developers and builders are offering far more.
A model for Concord at the Glen in Glenview, for example, had a food preparation island in the kitchen that can be used as a breakfast bar and a casual dining area for lunch. A butler’s pantry might be used to prepare cocktails and hors d’oeuvres for serving in the living room before dinner in the formal dining room. There is a mini-bar in the master suite sitting room for a midnight or early morning snack. And eating in the family room is as common as watching television.
As if that’s not enough to bust your buttons, some home buyers convert a second-floor bonus room into a second family room with a mini-refrigerator. The builder says basements can include a wet bar, depending upon the community, while patios, decks or walkout basements add outdoor dining options.
“Eating is so diverse and we have so many different types of families today that we offer many eating opportunities,” says Roger Mankedick, executive vice president of Palatine-based Concord Homes.
This emphasis on eating convenience in all parts of the house disturbs those fighting the nation’s growing girth.
“This is a move in the wrong direction,” says Dr. Robert Kushner, medical director of Northwestern Memorial Wellness Center in Chicago. “This is architecturally enabling” those who are battling weight problems.
To Kushner, the idea of a mini-bar in a second-floor family room to save someone from walking downstairs to the kitchen is appalling.
“It’s not a healthy change,” says Kushner, a physician and nutritionist who co-authored with nurse practitioner Nancy Kushner “Dr. Kushner’s Personality Type Diet.” (St. Martin’s Press, $23.95.)
While not every new home buyer opts for the bedroom breakfast bar, architect Salvatore Balsamo says snack stations are everywhere.
“We are seeing a lot of mini-kiosks in a home … more equipped bars in the family room and in the master suite,” says Balsamo, of Balsamo, Olson & Lewis, Ltd., Oakbrook Terrace. “I think this has been evolving over the last several years.”
The trend has been boosted by the miniaturization of appliances, which can now be hidden in niches or furniture anywhere in the house, says Balsamo.
The housing industry is no stranger to using thesensory and emotional associations of food in its marketing. Sales agents, for example, often place fresh-baked cookies or another enticing food in a house before showing it to prospective buyers. So it is hardly surprising that builders have taken that tactic a step further.
Not that every builder spotted the trend early. Increasingly popular formal dining rooms were written off as dated by many a few years ago. No longer.
While 30 percent of all the new single-family homes built in 2001 did not have a living room, 57 percent had a formal dining room or a space for formal dining, according to the National Association of Home Builders. That’s down from 47 percent of the new houses in 1985.
Kitchens account for about 13 percent of the area of a 2,300-square-foot house, the average size built in the U.S. in 2001.
Meanwhile, “the line between the kitchen, family room and the breakfast room is becoming very fuzzy,” says Stephen Moore, partner in charge of marketing for Bloodgood Sharp Buster, a Des Moines-based national architecture firm with offices in Palatine.
“We are beginning to see two kitchen islands,” says Moore, of a trend in California and the Southwest that he expects to reach Chicago soon.
One island is used for food preparation, the second “for eating and social interaction.”
The reason in-home eating places are proliferating is “because of the lifestyles we live now,” says Bob Riccio, Chicago director of sales and marketing for Malvern, Pa.-based Realen Homes, which has six developments in metro Chicago.
“Casual eating has become very popular,” he said. “We recognize that people are eating in just about every part of the house and we try to accommodate that.”
The combination of a kitchen with eating area and family room allows a time-starved parent to put together a meal, oversee children doing homework and keep an eye on the television news, all at the same time, according to Moore.
The variety of eating places also reflects American families going in many different directions.
“Parents may be eating one place in the house and teenagers with guests may be eating downstairs in the basement or family room,” notes Riccio. “On the nights when you find you are dining alone, sitting down at the kitchen or dining room table by yourself is a little depressing, so you might prefer to go to the family room and watch TV.”
For decades, experts believed the rate of overweight Americans was static, about 25 percent, writes Greg Critser in “Fat Land, How Americans Become the Fattest People in the World” (Houghton Mifflin, $24). But since the 1980s, the percentage of overweight or obese people in the U.S. has zoomed to 65 percent, a rate so high that U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher in 2001 said it is at “epidemic” proportions.
Obesity is closely linked to serious illness, notably hypertension, heart disease and diabetes.
Theories abound on why Americans have had this speedy bulking up.
Economists Shin-Yi Chou, Henry Saffer and Michael Grossman in a working paper called “An Economic Analysis of Obesity” for the National Bureau of Economic Research opine that with more women working and thus with less time to prepare home-cooked meals, Americans are eating more fast food, dense with calories and fat, according to the New York Times.
In his book, journalist Critser blames the U. S. government and American businesses, such as fast-food chains, for adding more calories and “supersized” portions to the national diet. But he also subscribes to the theory that more working parents have less time and energy to prepare well-balanced, home-cooked meals. They rely more on take-out and fast food options.
With reduced family time and energy after working all day, he suggests parents also have eased their traditional role as the food police for finicky young children.
“People are heavier today because they have more and more opportunity to put food in their mouths,” says Brad Saks, clinical psychologist at the Northwestern Wellness Center.
Twenty to 30 years ago “when you went to the gas station, you got gas,” says Saks. “You didn’t have convenience centers with snacks.”
At the same time, Americans are increasingly sedentary, particularly as more do their work in front of computers, then go home to relax in front of a TV. Food paired with television or with computers is “a toxic combination” for adding pounds, Saks says. It is especially insidious for young children.
If food is near to the computer or TV, “what incentive is there to become more active?” asks Saks. “We are creating a structure to de-incentive exercise.”
Kushner, who says “mealtime is mealtime,” advises patients to concentrate solely on eating and enjoying the companionship of others.
“Eat and just eat,” he declares. “That’s why in fine dining restaurants you don’t find TVs.”
Food in multiple rooms of a house only contributes to “increased nighttime nibbling, mindless munching and unguided grazing.”
“When you have gained 10 pounds a year, after several years, the house is no longer working for you. It has worked against you.”
U.S. home designs “are reflecting societal changes,” Kushner admits, but adds that “societal changes are leading to obesity. We are infusing all these unhealthy behaviors into the home. It’s convenience that’s getting us into trouble.”
Not surprisingly, builders bristle at the suggestion that home design leads to unhealthy eating.
“I don’t think the design of the house promotes eating which leads to obesity,” says Balsamo. “We don’t have fast-food kitchens in homes yet.”
“[House design] is not a contributor,” says Concord’s Mankedick. “We’re nothing more than responders. We don’t make the trends. We serve the trend.”
“I’d say it’s a great idea to have social interaction,” says Northwestern psychologist Saks of the rationale for more kitchen islands and other in-home convenience centers. “But it doesn’t need to be around food. Make a nook for people to talk, to play.”
Houses designed with “a little distance from the food would be wonderful,” Saks added. “Anything we can do to get people up and moving would be even better.”
