“Easy” is the Secret to Family Meals: Five Tools I Use

It’s no secret. I’m a fan of family meals. Eating together as a family while sitting around a table (in front of a TV doesn’t count) has been shown to reduce the odds that kids will be overweight, enhance their school performance, brighten their mood and decrease risky behavior. The reasons for these seemingly magical results are partially due to better nutrition but are also influenced by the conversations that naturally happen when a family joins together around a meal. When I encourage busy moms and dads to make mealtime a family affair, I often get the response, “We want to have family meals, but we just don’t have time to cook.” I get it. It’s not easy, especially when both parent work and kids have busier schedules than ever before in history. Five Time Saving Family Meal Tools Family Meal Tool One: Plan-Ahead with Menu Planners The first step to winning the family meal battle is knowing what you’re going to cook. There are a lot of meal planning tools out there. The one we’ve used successfully is The Fresh 20. The basic idea is that in addition to standard pantry items, like extra virgin olive oil, that you should always have on hand, you only need to buy 20 fresh ingredients each week to make five family dinners. The menu creators work with in-season produce to create each weekly plan. Each meal is quick to create and most of the meals are tasty. Note: there are typically a few items you cook-up over the weekend so you can add them to one or more of ...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - Category: Child Development Authors: Tags: Dr. Greene's Blog Family Dinner Family Meal Family Nutrition Source Type: blogs