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How Eating at Home can Save Your Life

Is sitting down to family dinners a thing of the past?  Does it seem like utopia rather than something families actually do.  Perhaps we use the excuse when work slows down, when the kids stop, when we get a second to breathe then we can all sit down together. 

With the hustle and bustle of life it seems like a miracle if a family actually shares a quiet meal together.  A few weeks ago there was an article in the Huffington Post titled, “How eating at home can save your life.”  Reclaim the family dinner!  What a marvelous idea. 

I however am single, no husband, no children.  So how does this apply to me?  More family dinners with my parents.  More family dinner with friends.  I’ve also been trying to cook more at home instead of always going out for dinner, a patern that is so easy to slip into.

For the parents the article pointed out some crazy stats:

• Research shows that children who have regular meals with their parents do better in every way, from better grades, to healthier relationships, to staying out of trouble.
• Kids who have regular meals are 42 percent less likely to drink.
• They are 50 percent less likely to smoke.
• They are 66 percent less like to smoke marijuana.
• Regular family dinners protect girls from bulimia, anorexia, and diet pills.
• Family dinners also reduce the incidence of childhood obesity.

As a parent, you can’t take those bullet points lightly.  It’s fact that parents and families are busy and it’s a tough balance between family life, work life and personal life.  So hard a balance I think one if the first things to go is family dinners.  We know we need to eat. Where we eat we may not think as much about.  Maybe this is a challenge for your family. Maybe you can’t remember the last time everyone sat down at the dinner table for 30 minutes without the TV or the iPhones or the Blackberries. Maybe you’re so on the go that like the Huffington Post article said, you eat “more meals in the minivan than in the kitchen.” I don’t know the specifics of your situation, but I felt shocked by this article and thought it was a great challenge for families.

The Huffington Post made a great point about cooking. “We complain of not having enough time to cook, but Americans spend more time watching cooking on the Food Network than actually preparing their own meals.”   Maybe Canadians are a bit better? ;)

Let’s bring dinner back!

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