Author: David Misselbrook

David Misselbrook was a South London GP for 30 years. He was involved with GP training, CPD...

I have just come back from the centre of the world. Not the centre of the earth of course. No, in ancient times the centre of the world was reckoned to be Delphi. This claim was evidence based. If we do not articulate our values and construct a world where freedom, tolerance, fairness and human dignity win the day then the west has no moral high ground from which to lecture the rest of the world. The west has rested on its smug moral superiority for far too long.

Bahrain has sometimes been called a string of shopping malls calling itself a country. This is quite a blinkered view. Bahrain is in fact a string of shopping malls and restaurants calling itself a country. Does it matter if we don’t eat together anymore? There are various markers to suggest that it does, particularly for children. The OECD state that students who do not regularly eat with their parents are significantly more likely to truant from school, and this correlates with school performance. And according to the 2014 European Congress on Obesity, children who do not eat dinner with their parents at least twice a week were 40 percent more likely to be overweight.