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There may be hope for my daughter’s diet after all.

This young woman has been picky since birth. I decided she must be a supertaster, because texture is a big deal for her. For the first 18 years of her life she pretty much subsisted on cereals, fruits and dairy—and trust me, that sounds a lot more varied than it actually was!

Then I read about this study that showed that teen-agers who eat dinner with their family wind up with pretty decent diets. I know my daughter has, amazingly, become a little more adventurous in her eating. Of course, now that she isn’t living with me she doesn’t have to do quite the power-challenge thing that came into play more than I’d like to admit when she was home.

Family meal time has always been a favorite thing for me, and I know Susan values it, too. And I never doubted other research indicating that children who eat at least a meal a day with their families wind up with fewer academic, drug and alcohol problems. Nice to know her nutritional intake, too, may have benefited in the long run.