Bernard O'Shea: I don't think I've eaten a single meal at the kitchen table 

Bernard O'Shea: We recently had to buy a new kitchen table, which got me thinking. When was the last time I sat down and had a meal? So it's phones down while I eat now.

I love eating. Such a simple but loaded statement. Some may view it as slothful. Others might view it as conspicuously consumptive and vulgar. Some may be visually fatigued by relentless pictures of fetishised dinner plates on their social media feed. They might simply yawn, but regardless of how you feel about anyone's love of eating, it's where we do most of our munching that has become an issue.

When you think of your kitchen table, do you automatically think of it as a place to eat? Growing up, every meal I ate was at the kitchen table. Even though we all came through the house at different times of the day, we ate every single morsel of food at the table. It might sound funny, but from zero to 17, while I was living at home, the only time I ate meals on my lap was when we didn't have enough space at the table. The only time I saw someone eat their Dinner while watching TV was when I had finished my Dinner and watched someone do it on TV. Even into my teens, the telly in the house was turned off at meal times.

We recently had to buy a new kitchen table, which got me thinking. When was the last time I sat down and had a meal? This is my general routine. Some days I'm nearby a canteen, and I'll sit down for 45 mins and eat; however, I'll mostly grab something on the go. I also partake in a good bit of dashboard dining. My car is full of sandwich wrappers and empty bottles, and there are a few half-empty coffee cups that have sprouted bacterial arabica. When I come in from work, I'll grab whatever is handiest and eat it standing up or eat it while I'm getting the kids their dinners. When their meals are ready, I berate them "turn off the telly" and sit and eat at the table. But as they duly point out regularly, "Why should we when you don't?". We should call it the 'Homework Table' or the 'Glue and Glitter Mess Table' because that's what it's mainly used for.

They are 100% right. I'm a terror for eating while looking at my phone, reading the paper, or sitting on the couch plonked in front of the telly. Last week I watched two Nevin Maguire videos on Instagram while eating a large bag of crisps. The irony of it. I could have just followed his demo and cooked myself a chicken tikka wrap and a curry. Hand on heart, I don't think I've eaten a single meal at a kitchen table that we bought for that exact purpose in well over a decade.

So what? According to The Mayo Clinic, experts have reported that "Dinner is for the table, not the couch. Staying seated at the table helps improve eating posture, reduces distraction and enhances focus throughout the meal. One study even found that eating at the dinner table was correlated with a healthier overall weight."

As a late adopter of all things mindful, I laughed wholeheartedly when I first saw the emergence of ' mindful eating'. Yet as I was to discover, being present and tasting and enjoying your food made me eat less. So with all the benefits sitting down undistracted while eating would be a cinch, yes? Well no.

I started a self-built program entitled 'Sit/Eat/Think'. My concept was that no matter what I would put down my gullet, I had to consume it at a table. My thinking was that I'd put effort into preparing healthy meals. My wife rolled her eyes when I told her about it: "For god's sake, Bernard, just have one meal a day at the table with the kids instead of some idiotic plan."

My 'plan' lasted roughly about three days. They both failed, like my 'pint-of-water-before-every-meal' plan and my 'chew-your-food-16-times' plan. They didn't fail because they're tricky. They didn't even fail because of some deeper physiological reason. They failed because I'm addicted to distraction.

I can concentrate on anything if I put my mind to it. I've written screenplays and books under tight schedules. I've done courses in subjects I had no interest in but ploughed through the yawns to finish them. My concentration has always been ok — but since lockdown, it's gone way down. The only different thing I'm consuming mentally is some dodgy phone habits I picked up. Mainly with Instagram, followed closely by YouTube.

I realized how much I matched the two of them together when I decided to put down the phone while eating. If you are an ex-smoker, you probably have a similar habit with coffee or a drink. They both went hand-in-hand. Similarly, with the cinema and popcorn, I couldn't eat without scrolling through my insta-feed.

So it's phones down while I eat now. As for eating at the kitchen table, I'm following my wife's advice and ensuring I eat one meal daily with the kids with no TV on. Who knows, next week we might even have one of those old-fashioned things called a conversation.