Benefits of family meals
There are many benefits to meal planning for your family, including healthy eating. By learning how to plan weekly meals and eating meals at home, you can control your portions and avoid eating hidden calories. In addition, family meals eaten at home tend to be less expensive and higher in nutrients.
Planning healthy, balanced family meals for the week can be a time saver for even the busiest people. By shopping for your meals once a week, you can save time, money and fuel by making fewer trips to the grocery store or drive-thru. Taking some time to learn how to plan balanced meals for your family will save you time—and help you eat better—in the long run.
Healthy habits
Children taste and accept foods at different rates. While it may feel like it takes forever for your child to enjoy a range of foods, remind yourself that no healthy child will starve themselves. Your role is to serve meals and snacks with all five food groups. Include a couple of safe foods you know they enjoy at meals. Most important is for you to sit down and eat with your child. When they see you eating and enjoying foods, know that when children are ready, they will try foods on their terms.
The way parents talk about food, cook meals and eat are the most important influence of developing healthy eating habits on a child. Children watch and imitate adults and look to them to learn everything from saying please and thank-you to fitness and nutrition behavior.
Children can also pick up on their parents’ attitudes about food. As role models, parents need to make sure they’re demonstrating a healthy attitude toward food so their children do, too.
Healthy relationship with food
Research shows that family mealtimes have a big impact on how children eat as they grow into adulthood and start making food choices of their own. One study showed that children who eat meals with their parents tend to eat more fruit, vegetables and dairy products than children who don’t share meals with their families.
Eating meals as a family is key to raising high-achieving, healthy and well-adjusted children. Family meals have been shown to improve academic achievement and self-esteem. Eating together also leads to more interest in nutrition: teenagers tended to eat more “fun” foods with their friends, but looked forward to eating a more healthful evening meal with their families. Another study from 2007 found that kids who ate with their families had healthier overall diets than those who did not. As a result, these kids also tended to have a lower prevalence of overweight, too.
Cooking family meals with your children can also be fun and educational and spark a life-long interest in cooking. One study demonstrated that cooking together also helped kids know how to make a “balanced” meal.
Your family will eat better when you eat together.
Improved Academic Achievement – Frequent family meals are linked with being successful in school, including getting better grades and scoring higher on achievement tests.
Better Nutrition – Home-prepared meals often mean better nutrition, with higher intakes of calcium, potassium, vitamin D, fiber and iron.
Higher Self-Esteem – Mealtime conversation brings the family together. It helps kids gain confidence and starts a lasting and positive relationship with food.
