10 Family Meal Tips

Start with family dinner
2-3 nights a week and work from there.

Let kids help! Let them pick the menu, help prepare meals, and set the table.

Too busy to prepare a meal? Pick up take-out, order pizza, or eat out, it still counts as quality time spent together!

Focus on familiar favorites. Work salads and vegetables into meals.

Keep ingredients for healthful meals on hand, including plenty of fruits and vegetables.

Stock the kitchen with fresh fruits, nuts, and low-fat cheese — stuff the kids can snack on after school.

Have a theme night dinner! A crowd pleaser in every household. See our theme night ideas.

Keep serving sizes under control, whether you're at home or eating out.

Crock pot meals allow you to put everything together before leaving for work. You'll come home to a dinner ready to eat!

Make it enjoyable. Leave the serious discussions for another time. Family meals are for nourishment, comfort, and support.

Benefits of Family Meals

Studies verify what some might consider common sense: families that eat together eat more healthfully, consuming less fast food, soft drinks, and fat and more fruits and vegetables. And developing good eating habits early on can help your children be healthier for the rest of their lives.

Family meals reflect involved parents, who want the opportunity both to talk and to listen to what their kids have to say. It's very comforting to children to know that their parents want to know what's going on in their lives.

Mealtimes can provide quality time for the whole household, fostering family unity and trust, and providing a setting for moral and intellectual discussions that reflect family values.

Family meals encourage communication skills, such as patient listening and expressing opinions respectfully. Chatting around the dinner table encourages kids to talk to their parents about sensitive issues. This is also a time to reinforce family traditions and cultural heritage.

Family meals may actually enhance the emotional well-being of teens. A study reported in the 2003 Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that adolescents who frequently sat down to family meals had better grades, less depression, and were less likely to drink alcohol, smoke, or use marijuana than kids who ate with their families less than twice a week.

 

Most Notable Benefits

• Everyone eats healthier meals.
• Kids are less likely to become overweight or obese.
• School grades will be better.
• You and your kids will talk more.
• You'll be more likely to hear about a serious problem.
  
• Kids will feel like you're proud of them.
  
• There will be less stress and tension at home.
  
• Kids more likely to stay away from cigarettes.
  
• They're less likely to drink alcohol.
  
• They won't likely try drugs.
  
• They're less likely to use illicit drugs.
  
• Friends won't likely abuse prescription drugs.