Eating Together: Mealtimes for Your Family
From Wayne Parker,
Why Family Meals?
If you ever have time to watch some of the old family sitcoms like the Brady Bunch, My Three Sons or others, you will often see families eating together. But if your family is more like mine, there are way too many things to do outside the home to connect often at mealtime.
But mealtimes are an important part of building family ties. And in addition, there are some big health benefits to taking time to eat together.
Kids Eat Better. With the alarming rate of childhood obesity and lack of fitness, the experts in the field of children's health warn us to avoid a steady diet of fast food. Too often, when we are running to soccer games, dance recitals, or piano lessons, dinner is secured in the drive through lane and eaten in the car. Taking time to prepare and serve a nutritious meal at home can help kids eat better food-lower fat, lower sodium and higher nutritional values.
Parents Eat Better. If it is good for the kids, it is good for us. Try an experiment: commit to eating a prepared meal at home at least once a day for a week, and see if you don't feel better and if you have been able to keep your weight down. Eating at home instead of in the car on the way to or from an event will help you, too.
Doing Double Duty: Spending Time and Eating. One of the challenges parents often have (and especially fathers) is balancing the demands on their time. Eating a meal at home with the family is one of those high leverage activities-you can spend time with your family and eat a meal at the same time. These are both high priorities and you get to do them at the same time!
Daily Check-Ins. Among the many difficulties of moving into the teenage years is that our kids are more mobile and tend to spend less time at home. Having the family together for at least one mealtime each day (usually breakfast or dinner) gives parents and teens a chance to connect they might not otherwise have. No matter what the age of your children, mealtime is a good time to check in with each other.
Learning Good Manners. Anyone else noticed that good table manners are missing from some of our children today. This is probably a result of the more casual atmosphere of today's busy lifestyle, but good manners are essential to success. At the family table, you can practice setting a table properly; you can teach good manners and proper etiquette. And you can see how well your teaching is taking.
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Eating dinner as a family puts priorities of the home in order
By Sarah Karnasiewicz
3/15/2006
Catholic Digest (www.catholicdigest.org/)
Marialisa Calta, author of Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the Modern American Family, talks about saying “no” to overscheduling and why family meals really make a difference.
COOKBOOK AUTHOR – Marialisa Calta, author of Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the Modern American Family. (Catholic Digestphoto)
COOKBOOK AUTHOR – Marialisa Calta, author of Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the Modern American Family. (Catholic Digestphoto)
Q. Given the hectic schedules many families have today, the family dinner ritual seems like something of a relic. Wouldn’t reviving the family dinner really mean drastically reworking the way modern families live their lives?
A. Absolutely. We’re overscheduled to an insane degree and I’m speaking of myself and my family too – my younger daughter did three sports for a while, every season. It’s crazy, and you have to say no to some things. You have to prioritize, and most of all, you really have to plan. Even if you are not a planner, you have to make yourself get organized around food.
Q. Making home-cooked meals every night seems like a big task. Why is it so important?
A. Because with our crazy schedules, when do we ever really get to be together as a family? You may spend a lot of time watching your child on the soccer field, but to me, that is not the same quality of time as sitting across a table, looking your children in the eyes – as a friend of mine says, “Seeing if their pupils are dilated ...” – and having a conversation.
Q. In the beginning of your book, you quote Marion Cunningham, author of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, as saying, “We’re living a motel life...” Is that the idea you’re referring to – that as families we’re constantly moving in and out, orbiting one another, but never meeting?
A. Exactly. I think that meals area time when families can really learn about their connections. One of the mothers I interviewed said, “My kids have had to learn that even if they’ve just had a fight with their sibling, they still have to sit next to them at the table.” That’s important.
Q. For parents who are away from their kids all day, is the family dinner a place where they can monitor the kinds of food their kids eat and act as healthy models of adult diet and behavior?
A. Exactly. The fact is your kids still have to eat, one way or another, whether or not you cook. They’re going to eat, and you’re going to eat – so I figure, you might as well do it as well as you can and do it together.
Q. Given the growing concern about children’s poor eating habits, do you think perhaps the government, as well as the family, should take the initiative and teach kids how to prepare food? Maybe home economics should be reintroduced into the standard public-school curriculum?
A. The government would probably do best to provide healthier meals for hot lunches and help schools keep soda and fast food franchises out of the lunchroom. But I hate to advocate for sweeping government expenditures when there’s so much else to worry about. You could argue that a fresh homemade family meal is really a luxury – an ideal that many families cannot live up to – either because both parents work long hours or good groceries are hard to come by in poorer neighborhoods while fast food is cheap and convenient. But I don’t think that a simple, and I’m talking simple, homemade meal – including things made with canned broth and canned beans, not all grown from scratch, high-end, organic food – is a luxury for most people. I think it is a necessity.
Q. You emphasize one-dish meals and profess a weakness for frozen pie crusts and canned fruit. Do you think that perhaps part of the problem is that parents have unreasonably high standards – and believe that a “good parent” cooks meals that are 100 percent organic, made from scratch, and artfully arranged?
A. Definitely. Parents think, “I can’t produce the perfect Martha Stewart meal, so I’m not going to try.” But I also think a lot of people are just not paying attention; for example, my mother lives in a very upscale neighborhood in New Jersey and at night there is a Mr. Wok delivery truck at every house. So, it’s not that some people don’t have the resources to do it, it’s that they don’t think it’s important.
Q. There is a growing body of research that contends that kids who eat family meals on a consistent basis reap enormous physical and psychological benefits. A correlation has been shown between the family meals and improved academic performance. Frankly, it sounds like there must be something magic in the food. What do you think accounts for the benefits reflected in the studies?
A. There is something very soothing about sharing a meal. Just think about the phrase “having a place at the table.” I think if you have a place at the table – which can be extrapolated as a metaphor for your place in the world – it helps you feel a little more grounded. What I found interesting – and this is definitely true in my own family and in many of the families I visited – was that most kids had to eat at a certain place every night. I worry about kids who are eating standing up or next to the microwave – where are they finding out how to fit into the world?
Q. If the family dinner continues to leak out of American life, what else do we stand to lose?
A. We’ll lose a fundamental pleasure, which is the pleasure of a good meal with people that we love. And I think that is very sad, though we may find some new ritual to take its place. But I don’t think it’s going to come from a computer or a television. Kids learn who they are by sitting at the table, through family stories and traditions. There’s a lot of focus on parents’ learning about their kids, but kids also learn an enormous amount about their parents at dinner. What they learn might not always be pleasant, but they figure a lot out about the family by sitting at the table.
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This article is republished with permission by Catholic Online from the Catholic Digest (http://www.catholicdigest.org), a Catholic Online Preferred Publishing Partner.
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Republished by Catholic Online with permission of Catholic Digest (www.catholicdigest.org), a Catholic Online Preferred Publishing Partner.
Many Benefits of Family Meals
A number of studies have shown that children whose families regularly eat meals together eat more healthful foods and are less likely to engage in behaviors such as smoking, doing drugs or drinking alcohol.
Families that eat meals together regularly also have better communication. Meals are a time when members of a family can bring up topics of interest, concerns or questions. Some of the best family stories I’ve ever heard were told around a dinner table.
Of course that’s not to say that all meals are without their struggles. Some nights I’m tempted to take my food and go eat in a closet. I must constantly remind myself that despite my nightly mantras of “Use your fork,” “Don’t aggravate your brother” and “I’m not going to tell you how many bites you have to eat, just eat,” the important thing is that we are spending time together as a family.
Gathering Together on a Deeper Level
Gathering together to share food and companionship is not just something we do as a family within the confines of our homes. It is also an integral part of our faith.
Each week at Mass we come together to celebrate and break bread. Many of Jesus’ miracles centered around food and celebration, such as the Wedding at Cana and the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Jesus even chose the setting of a supper to commemorate his last evening with his friends before his death.
Eating meals together can be a wonderful expression of love and companionship. Here are some ideas to keep your family gathering at the table:
• If for some reason your family can’t seem to arrange your schedules to have dinner together, switch the family meal to either breakfast or lunch. If that’s not possible, try to schedule at least one or two nights a week to have dinner as a family. The important thing is to take the time to be together.
• Draw up a weekly schedule and assign each person a night. Have that person pick what he or she would like for dinner that evening and then invite that person to help prepare the meal.
• In the best of all worlds, families would sit down every night to a home-cooked meal. The reality of two-income families, school, friends and extracurricular activities doesn’t always make that possible, though. Remember that it’s the time spent together that’s important. So even if you don’t have time to prepare a meal, a delivered pizza is more delicious when you all share it together.
• Eliminate distractions during dinner. My daughter, Madison, repeatedly asks if she can eat her dinner in the family room so she can watch cartoons. To combat this nightly fight, we’ve started turning the television off before dinner is ready to be served. Likewise, let the answering machine pick up any phone calls. If it’s important enough, the caller will leave a message.
• Continue family traditions by making meals that have been passed down through your family over the years. Recently, my mom spent an afternoon teaching me how to make one of my grandma’s recipes using the same utensils and pots my grandma had used.
• Begin each meal with a prayer. You can either use the traditional mealtime prayer or create your own. After the prayer, ask each family member to offer one thing or person for which they would like to pray or express thanks.
• Create a family cookbook. Collect favorite family recipes and gather them in a cookbook. If they are handwritten, make copies or scan them into your computer and print them out. Give a copy of the cookbook to members of the family as a keepsake. Or give one as a gift for someone just entering the family, such as a new bride or groom.
http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Nov2003/Family.asp#top
Families Eating Together
Making time to eat together lets family members know how much you love them and how special they are! Research shows that families who eat dinner together most days of the week tend to be happier and develop higher level of social skills. They eat more healthfully- more fruits and vegetables, fewer snacks. The children have a lower rate of smoking, drinking alcohol, and using illegal drugs.
Family meals are a time for humor, joyous celebration and catching up with each other.
How many times a week does our family eat…
_______ _______ _______ ______
Fast Food in the car Orders take out Eat at different times Eat together
Think It Through:
My favorite meal is __________________________________________________
What parts of preparing or cleaning up from a meal do I enjoy most? Least?
(i.e., cooking, setting the table, cleaning up, sweeping the floor, doing the dishes.)
What can we do to sit down as a family more often? ________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Act: Reflect on our family’s table rules: Is everyone’s presence expected? What common courtesies are expected at our table? Do we express gratitude for what we have? Do we remember the many hands involved in bringing food to our table: The hand of God, the hands of farmers, transporters, processors, grocers, preparers? How is food distributed and shared at our table? Are we expected to try a bit of everything? What is our family’s attitude toward wasting food, toward overeating?
Scripture: Luke 22: 15- 18 When the hour came, he took his place at table with the apostles. He said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for, I tell you, I shall not eat it (again) until there is fulfillment in the kingdom of God." Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and said, "Take this and share it among yourselves; for I tell you (that) from this time on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."
Resources: Book: The Surprising Power of Family Meals: How Eating Together Makes Us Smarter, Stronger, Healthier and Happier, by Miriam Weinstein, Aug 2005, Steerforth
Property of National Association of Catholic Family Life Ministers – http://www.nacflm.org
Permission to reprint granted to NACFLM members. Others may call 937-229-3324 for reprint permission.
http://www.vermontcatholic.org/FamilyLife/FamilyFlyer.htm
The 5 Benefits -- and a Few Risks -- of Eating Together at the Dinner Table
by www.SixWise.com
Life has a way of pulling families in a million different directions all at the same time. While you are trying to get home from work at a reasonable hour, your spouse may be running all over town doing errands, and meanwhile your kids are tied up with activities of their own. All of this scrambling makes something that, in theory at least, should be simple sound like a monumental feat.
What we are referring to is sitting down, as a family, to have dinner together most nights of the week. It may take some finagling, some rearranging of schedules and some tenacity on everyone's part, but those who have made the effort and succeeded have found that the rewards made it well worth their while.
"Families that do have dinner together often are families whose parents are fully engaged with their kids. We're certainly not back to 'Leave It to Beaver' and 'Father Knows Best,' but it's heading in that direction," said Richard D. Mulieri, a spokesman for the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.
Interestingly enough, while it seems that hardly anyone has taken the time to eat dinner as a family since the 1950s, the number of U.S. families who do eat dinner together is actually increasing (reversing a decades-long downward trend).
In fact, in 2005, 58 percent of kids aged 12 to 17 reported that they ate dinner with their families at least five times a week, compared to only 47 percent in 1998, a survey by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found.
What benefits are these frequent family-meal-attendees reaping? Let us count the ways …
1. Better Nutrition
Numerous studies have overwhelmingly pointed to the fact that families who eat together have better overall nutrition. In turn, this means they also have a lower risk of many diseases and of being overweight or obese.
One such study, conducted by Harvard researchers and published in the Archives of Family Medicine, found that families who reported eating together "every day" or "almost every day" took in more healthy nutrients, such as:
* Calcium
* Fiber
* Iron
* Vitamins B6 and B12
* Vitamins C and E
… than families who said they "never" or "only sometimes" ate meals together.
Another study by the University of Minnesota found that children whose families ate meals together often consumed more fruits and vegetables and fewer snack foods than those who did not.
2. Kids do Better in School, Less Likely to Take Drugs
Not only have studies found that kids who eat with their families get better grades in school and have a more positive attitude about their future, but they also are less likely to get involved with negative behaviors like drinking alcohol, taking drugs or smoking.
The Columbia University study found that teens who only eat dinner with their families twice a week or less are:
* 3 times as likely to try marijuana
* 2.5 times more likely to smoke cigarettes
* 1.5 times as likely to try alcohol
… compared to teens who eat five or more family dinners a week.
3. Automatic "Check-In" Time
Perhaps the noticed benefits that kids display from eating family dinners comes from the fact that it gives parents a set time every night to "check-in" with their kids.
"People are really starting to understand that this is an important thing," said Richard D. Mulieri, a spokesman for the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. "Families that do have dinner together often are families whose parents are fully engaged with their kids …"
People who do eat dinner together regularly often say that being able to talk and find out about each other's days is the best part. Sitting down together at the dinner table -- sans TV, phones calls or other distractions -- is the perfect opportunity to discuss what's going on in your lives.
Kids who eat dinner with their families regularly are less depressed, less likely to take drugs and alcohol and get better grades in school.
4. Help Your Kids Develop Language Skills
When it comes to family events, gamily dinners were the most important one in contributing to children's language development, according to a Harvard University study.
"When there is more than one adult at the table, it tends to make talk richer, topics are established by adult interest and can be extremely valuable opportunities for children to learn," said Dr. Catherine Snow, professor of education at Harvard and the lead researcher of the study.
5. Spend Time Together as a Family
Looking back on their childhoods, many parents will recall their nightly dinner hour, when everyone was expected to sit down at the table. Many will also recall these times as some of their most cherished memories. Establishing this routine with your own family will give you time to bond as a family now, and memories to fondly look back on later.
What About the Risks?
Believe it or not, there are some risks to eating together as a family. In order to be successful, family dinners must be enjoyable -- for you, for your spouse, for your kids. If everyone is tense, irritable or unhappy, there won't be a lot of conversation, bonding or other benefits.
So, in order to ensure that family dinners are beneficial, be careful of what you speak of.
"It's not the time to talk about cleaning their room or curfews," says Susan Moores, a registered dietitian. "Instead focus on open-ended questions about things your kids are interested in or things that will get them talking."
Also, stay away from the "clean your plate" mentality. Allow kids to serve themselves and just take a little bit. Forcing a child to eat everything on his plate will teach him to ignore his body's cues that he's full.
Finally, remember that it's OK (and probably necessary) to keep things simple. Have grilled or baked chicken with a salad, or throw meat and veggies in a crock-pot in the morning for a warm meal after work. You can also try meals that your kids can help prepare, like turkey burgers or individual pizzas they top themselves. Remember also that you can still sit down for a family meal even on those nights when you do order pizza or other take-out food.
The bottom line is, do what works for you -- whether that's cooking extra meals on the weekend to serve during the week, preparing meals in the morning or eating simpler meals, like sandwiches and soup, sometimes -- so that you're able to sit down and enjoy the meal too.
Recommended Reading
Salt: What You Really Need to Know About the Harmful & Healthful Effects of Sodium
What Exactly Does it Mean When Foods are "Hydrogenated," and What Risks Can it Pose?
http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/06/05/03/the_5_benefits_--_and_a_few_risks_--_of_eating_together_at_the_dinner_table.htm
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