Family Dinner: Nurture and Nutrition

Yesterday's post was on how important family meals were for me when I was growing up. I promised you more info on how to create a lasting impression on your kids at mealtime.

As a dietitian, I am always interested in statistics on how we can improve the nutrition for our families. A study out this fall in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that teens who eat meals with their families have the following benefits:

• Eat more fruits and vegetables than peer not eating with family
• Drink fewer sodas
• Make it a priority to eat with family
• Teen girls are more likely to eat breakfast when they eat frequent family meals
• Kids who grow up with healthy habits carry them on to adulthood

While nutrition is important, there are even more benefits to eating together. Families who eat together report having closer connections emotionally as a family unit. Family meals are a time for connection, communication, and love. This si not a good time for disciplining children. Mealtime should be a time that everyone looks forward to.

Here are some tips to start making family meals important in your house:

• Don't worry if you don't have time to make the meal from scratch. Just the act of eating together has enormous benefits. Keep it simple and don't feel pressured to have anything fancy. Even if you get takeout but eat it together, it counts as a family meal!
  
• Keep the conversation light. Family meals are a good time to share positive stories about what happened in everyone's day but not a good time to harp on kids to get their homework done or clean up their rooms. You may be surprised what you kids will share at the dinner table when the atmosphere is relaxed.
  
• Have proper attire for the dinner table. Don't let the kids come to the table without a shirt.
• Model good table manners. Proper etiquette will take your kids far in life.
• Mom and Dad: Eat your vegetables. It doesn't matter how many times you tell your kids to eat their vegetables--they are not going to eat them if they don't see you eating them.
• If you don't always have time to eat dinner together every night because of busy schedules, try for breakfast in the morning or lunch on the weekends. Aim for at least two family dinners each week, if not seven!
• Don't make your kids clean their plate. Let them serve themselves from the age of 5 on. Encourage them to take small portions and follow their sense of fullness instead of feeling like they have to clean their plate.
• Get creative. Try new recipes and include the whole family in planning, shopping for, and preparing meals. When kids help to plan the meals they are much more likely to eat everything cooked (even the vegetables!)
• Create a nice environment with a candle, fresh flowers, or some soft music.
• Last but not least: Turn off the TV during dinnertime!
  

Does anyone have any other good tips? I would love to hear them!

Don't you love the 70's family dinner photo? Courtesy of gregor_y's photostream

Labels: family, Tara Gidus

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Family Meals

My grandma came down to Florida to visit last weekend. This was a big deal because she is 82 years old and came down to see her first great grandchild, Basil. We nicknamed her Gram Gram so that as Basil gets older he will not confuse her with Grandma, who is my mom.

Gram Gram and I were relaxing and chatting one evening after Basil went to bed and we were talking about my favorite subject, food. I was telling her about the many times I hear from clients (and even friends) that their kids are picky eaters. Please understand that Basil is only 4 months old right now and maybe I will eat my words in a few years, but here I go anyway....

Parents tell me all the time that their kids "will only eat mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, or pizza." I was telling my grandmother that I just don't remember having that much control over my parents when I was younger. My mother seriously used to feed us zucchini pancakes for dinner. If that was what was for dinner, that is what we ate. There was no refusal to eat it and have mom make mac and cheese for us instead. You ate what was served or you didn't eat.

The other thing I hear often is that the parents make dinner for the kids and then eat themselves after the kids go to bed. Growing up we ate dinner promptly at 5:30 PM every night. Mom, Dad, my brother and I ate together every night. We always had a vegetable (often fresh from the garden out back) and a glass of milk (I grew up in Wisconsin) at every meal.

I guess I didn't realize that other people did not grow up this way until much later in life. I know that our lives are, or at least seem to be, busier now than they were when I was growing up. Dads (and Moms) get home late from work and miss eating dinner with the family. The kids are overcommitted with afterschool activities and end up eating dinner in the car between practices.

Research consistently shows that when families eat together, the nutritional quality of the kid's diet is better. Family dynamics are better. Kids are more likely to accept new foods and eat vegetables because they see their parents eating them (and liking them). Kids drink less soda and more milk.

I am going to write more about this tomorrow and give you some tips on how to improve your family's eating.

PS Thanks Mom! As with many things in life, sometimes it takes a long time to realize that what your parents did for you is priceless. You instilled healthy eating in me from a very young age and I appreciate it now! How about some zucchini pancakes when I come home for Christmas?

Photo of Gram Gram and Basil taken 11/11/07

Labels: family, Tara Gidus

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