“We are on target to serve the last dessert on Feb. 27, 2054,” Harry Balzer, research firm NPD (USAToday).

Dessert with dinner is in decline. Today, only 12% of dinners at home include dessert. Down from 15% ten years ago. 24% in 1986. The above quote is a tongue in cheek response, but if the trend continues, 39 years from today will be a sad day. (Check out the article here.)

According to the article, the missing dessert is not a health conscience decision (interestingly the rise of obesity runs in the direct counter to the dessert’s decline). Neither is the missing dessert a financial decision. Instead, “Americans are trying to simplify the whole eating process. The easiest way to simplify is to eliminate – and the easiest thing to eliminate at dinner is dessert” – If there is not enough time for dessert, do we want every meal to be fast food? **

Deep ministry, for Jesus, happened around the dinner table. Drinks and food and conversation. In the scriptures he is found more often eating a meal, than in the synagogue or teaching on a hillside.  Jesus reclining at the passover meal became the central symbol of Christianity – Communion. But today that symbolic meal is far from relaxed (a wafer and grape juice shot of simplification – no reclining allowed). In many ways all of our meals and days have become compact and fast. Little time for deep conversation. But Jesus’s ministry was built around the table. While Jesus sat and ate, he talked and taught. With tax collectors and pharisees and disciples and drunks and … It was dinner ministry. I am sure there was time for dessert.

Lets take the example of Jesus, break the fast food trend, and eat dessert tonight. As a bonus, the more dessert the less likely we are to be obese…

** Taking meal simplification to a new level. KFC has an edible cup. Drink and then eat. Just make sure you do it in that order… (Check it out here.)