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Family Mealtime:......It’s More than Just Eating....it develops and prospers the entire family......
Posted by Vishva News Reporter on March 31, 2009 |
Left to Right: Aksana, Avinash
and mom Madhu Badoni work together to get a salad ready. Having children
help out takes some of the stress off parents when it comes to getting a
meal on the table.
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THOSE WHO EAT
TOGETHER STAYS TOGETHER IN ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE LIVING....
Many modern families (meaning families in industrialized societies) have
two-fulltime-earning parents and children overloaded with school and
after-school activities, homework, sports, piano lessons or other
extracurricular activities such as a must TV, MSN, Facebook pals and
cell phone chats as a daily route...
And such parents and their children struggle to find the time in their
daily over-hectic schedules to properly plan and prepare their meals and
also sit down together and enjoy a meals.
When something has to give, the family meal can be one of the first
things to go, but letting family mealtime slip could have bigger
consequences than most families realize
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Research in United States of
America and Canada over the past fifteen years has shown that families
who regularly eat meals together as a life priority enjoy many life
welfare and prospering benefits including the following major benefits
:
- Any time you sit down and eat together with your
family, whether it is breakfast, and/or lunch, and/or dinner, there are
measurable benefits for all family members and especially children.
- Establish healthy nutritional behaviours and improve
overall diet quality for children and parents too;
- Help children form positive attitudes about food and
create fond memories that will last a lifetime;.
- Children perform better in school, tend to be happier, and
have a decreased risk of substance abuse...... |
To continue reading the above research documentation on this
life-knowledge-sharing PVAF website....please click on the next line......and
with this knowledge prosper with health in the hectic wealth-focused lifestyle
to even truly enjoy your wealth....because without health wealth will mean very
little in life......
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Family
Mealtime:
It’s More than Just Eating....
Edmonton Journal:
March 18, 2009: By Debbie Olsen
With afterschool activities, homework, sports, and hectic work schedules
for parents, it’s easy to understand why many modern families struggle
to find the time to sit down together and enjoy a nutritious meal.
When something has to give, the family meal can be one of the first
things to go, but letting family mealtime slip could have bigger
consequences than most families realize.
Research over the past fifteen years has shown that families who
regularly eat meals together enjoy better nutrition and are likely to
decrease the risk of unhealthy weight gain. “Family meals have the
potential to establish healthy nutritional behaviours and improve
overall diet quality,” said Dr. Sarah Woodruff, an assistant professor
at Wilfrid Laurier University who published several recent Canadian
studies related to family meals and dietary quality.
“Any time you sit down and eat together with your family, whether it is
breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner, there are measurable benefits.” Perhaps
even more surprising, research in the United States has shown that
children who regularly enjoy family meals perform better in school, tend
to be happier, and have a decreased risk of substance abuse. It seems
that one of the best ways to stay close to your children is to eat with
them.
This research has encouraged many families to make an effort to sit down
and enjoy meals together more often.
For some families that means slowing things down and getting back to
basics – you could call them slow foodies. Other families simply work to
find a way to fit family meal times back into their hectic schedules.
For the past year, the Badoni family has been using the slow food
approach to family meal time. With two children involved in sports and
other after school activities it was a challenge to sit down together
and enjoy a family meal. The solution they chose was to eat a little
later on nights when someone has a game or an afterschool event. They
typically enjoy a healthy snack and sit down together as a family after
the game or activity. “We used to rush to eat,” explained Madhu Badoni.
“We’d often eat at the counter in our kitchen, but in the last year we’ve
changed and we eat around the dinner table instead. The entire dynamic
has changed. We’re eating better and having conversations with our
children that we never had the time for before. It’s something we all
look forward to.”
Other busy families use a different approach to fit in family meal
times. Instead of slowing things down, they plan ahead for quicker meals
that fit into their lifestyle.
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“We really have to work together and plan ahead to make family meal
times successful,” said Dana Edmundson, a busy mother of four school
aged children. “Our children are involved in gymnastics, basketball,
indoor soccer and two different youth groups. Dinnertime is a chance to
catch our breath and talk to our kids, before we head out the door to
the next activity.”
Whether you are a single parent, are two working parents or simply have
a family schedule filled with sports, piano lessons or other
extracurricular activities, finding the time to enjoy a healthy meal
together should be a priority.
Here are some simple strategies to
help make it happen.
• Plan
Ahead – Menu planning helps reduce the stress associated
with getting dinner on the table and saves you time and money. Be sure
to plan menus that include items from each of the four major food groups
in Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating.
• Make
it a Team Effort – It is important to involve everyone •
Prepare Meals in Advance – Whether you make extra meals on weekends and
freeze them for later or prepare a crock pot meal in the morning before
heading off for work, preparing in advance makes it easier to find the
time to sit down together in the evening.
•
Dinners in a Dash – For those nights when you didn’t
plan ahead and you have no idea what to fix for supper, it’s a good idea
to have ingredients and recipes on hand that can be prepared in 30
minutes or less.
Some basic ingredients to keep on hand might include frozen boneless
skinless chicken breasts, fresh or frozen stir-fry vegetables, rice,
onions and lettuce.
Ready-to-use ingredients can also be a real life saver. in meal planning
and preparation, so that no one feels overburdened.
Even very young children can help plan meals, set the table and prepare
simple items like salads. In addition to teaching valuable skills,
involving children in meal preparation can help to take some of the
stress off parents.
The facts are on the table, taking the time to sit down as a family and
enjoy a healthy meal together will help children form positive attitudes
about food and create fond memories that will last a lifetime.
The bottom line is to do what works for you. Whether you slow things
down or plan ahead to make family meal time fit into your schedule, the
benefits of eating together will last long after the meal ends. |
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Ask The Expert: Sandi Richard and Dr. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer |
Edmonton Journal: 18 Mar 2009: By Gen Handley
As a Food Network television host and an author of a nutrition book
series, Sandi Richard understands the difficulties of eating healthy.
But as a mother of seven children, she definitely knows the benefits –
and challenges - of sitting down with the family to eat together.
“When I only had two kids, I was losing my mind,” she says laughing. “I
was the queen of chicken fingers.” As both Richard’s career and family
grew larger, she began to discover ways of having healthy, family meals
in spite of different schedules and lack of time. She came up with a
list of simple steps that would transform not only dinner time but the
family’s health and its relationships.
Create a blank dinner list for the next week with five lines and sit
down with the family to plan out what they’ll be eating during the next
week. “It doesn’t take long and make sure you take suggestions from
everyone,” Richard says. “And make sure you source where these recipes
come from – it can be from your head or a cookbook.”
Next, make a master grocery list for the list of meals, regardless if
you have some of the ingredients in the pantry or not. “No matter what,
you’ll always have this list to look and when you go for groceries then
you can see what you have and don’t have,” she says. “It’s a really
handy reference to have.
Repeat this process for three weeks so you can rotate the weeks and not
have to repeat the work again until you decide to add another week of
plans to the rotation.
“Put the meal plan in a duotang or binder and place it somewhere near
the recipes for easy access,” she suggests. “Trust me, this really works
because the hardest part is thinking about what to cook – the pressure
is 100 per cent off.”
On her Food Network show, Fixing Dinner, Richard has been successful
with families of all types because it all comes down to one idea:
keeping things simple.
“The old model doesn’t work anymore,” echoes Dr. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer,
a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of
Minnesota.
“But there are ways of making it happen.” Neumark-Sztainer believes that
in order for family dinners to happen,
all the members need to be not
only flexible, but must place dinner time high up on the priority list
so that they can have that time to gather around the table.
“I think it can be hard, but families just need to look at their
schedules and what changes need to be made,” she explains. “It should be
up there with music lessons or other extracurricular activities - it’s
definitely worth thinking about.” I
n addition to organizing your time, Neumark-Sztainer says to take
advantage of healthy foods that are not prepared entirely, but somewhat
ready to eat. Pre-bagged salads and sandwiches are some options that are
quick, easy and healthy. Both Richard and Neumark-Sztainer say there are
some serious benefits to eating together as a family such as saving
money, eating healthier, and also bringing the family unit a lot closer
together.
“It takes such a burden off the person who normally cooks and this
spreads to the rest of the family,” Richard says. With a lot of emphasis
on ultra-healthy eating these days, Richard says we have lost focus of
the big picture of eating balanced meals that include fresh fruits and
vegetables, meat, poultry, and dairy products.
“If we know what we’re going to eat at the end of the day, instinctively
our body balances out our nutritional intake until dinner time,” Richard
says. “If you’re having cheesy lasagna for dinner, you’re not going to
have it for lunch.”
Because of her busy schedule as a professor and a mother of four,
Neumark-Sztainer knows exactly what it is like trying to balance the
hectic routines of family and professional life. “I’m talking to you
from my office, but I thinking about what I should be cooking right
now,” she says chuckling.
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