What’s the easiest way to improve your health? Close the kitchen door! Nowadays, the sightlines in a house show everything but kitchens of the past were sequestered to the far back corner, barricaded on all sides by walls. Open kitchens may be beautiful, but do they come without consequence? In fact, no, they might not be all good. Research and recent trends show that an open kitchen can impact your and your family’s health.
You don’t have to watch a renovation show or read a magazine to know the current trend: open concept. In this day and age, you always see the kitchen when you walk through the front door. There are both altruistic and practical reasons behind the open kitchen. This concept of wall-less living dates back to architect Frank Lloyd Wright. He was stuck by the lofty notion that openness and ample light could better enhance social and creative interactions. The 20th-century post-industrial American architects took inspiration from the almost “exotic” climate of California where temperate weather allowed indoor and outdoor spaces to flow together, creating seamless transitions between spaces.
While maybe those open spaces are seamless, is it possible that there’s a medical impact to having an open kitchen? Though the sampling size is small (only 57 participants), a medical study had clear results. The study observed that a separation between the kitchen and eating space reduced the amount of food eaten by participants and it also saw a reduction in stressful feelings and “scattered-brained” thinking.
With no walls, the division between meal times – and actually sitting down to breakfast, lunch, and dinner – also disappears. If we’re constantly near the kitchen and have no division of space, then it is much easier to eat mindlessly. Stepping away from the computer could mean stepping into the kitchen. If done frequently, this form of continual eating can negatively impact your health.
Not only can open kitchens impact your own health, they can also impact the health of your family. In our multi-tasking world, it has become so much easier, almost necessary, to do something else while eating. But doing other tasks, like homework or using electronics, has been shown to reduce enjoyment and satiation of meals. But this potential unhealthy pattern can be fixed — if families unplug from life and focus just on mealtime, the food is enjoyed more and you’ll end up with a higher level of satiety in the end. Likewise, quieting down mealtimes can help. Higher levels of noise (like from a television in the living room) can also affect your eating and are confirmed by a study to aslso reduce people’s perception of salty and sweet foods.
Not everyone can renovate their kitchen or wants to add walls to close it up, but there are a few ways to avoid the negative health consequences of an open kitchen. Giving yourself a schedule and routine will help define mealtimes so you’re focused on the meal itself. If you have to look at a phone or work on a computer, try to avoid doing it in the kitchen. If you do other activities at the dinner table (like homework or paying bills), when it’s time to eat, make sure that the space is cleaned off. In short, try to make your table free of other distractions. Mealtimes should be spent enjoying family and food. This will help both you and your family focus on each other and have wonderful memories. During mealtime, all other stresses can wait!