Ed. Note: This article focuses on the benefits of eating together for families with children. I believe that families come in all shapes and sizes; I just chose families with kids for today’s article. Thanks for reading Almost Fit - I really do appreciate it.

With the pace of life building at an ever increasing rate, for many of us, sharing meals at the dinner table is becoming a lost art. Often times if families eat together at all, it is in the car after having placed an order in front of an illuminated board of “value” options, yelling through a cheap microphone, trying to make it to the next activity only a few minutes late for once.

For a while we were sucked into this vortex of squeezing meals in between the “more important” things (as if meals were not critical to life!). Here’s an example.

“Would you like to super-size that, little man?”

When we sold our house to move to Oregon, we were between homes for a couple of months. We traveled and vacationed quite a bit, staying with friends and family, and then living in a temporary rental until the deal on the new house closed. As a result, we ate fast food much more than we normally would. And this began to rub off on our 2-year old son (my wife was 7 months along with our second at the time).

One day, in the drive-thru line at a ubiquitous coffee stop, my son asked me to roll down his window so he could talk into the microphone.

In his tiny toddler-sized voice, he lowered his tone and loudly said, “Uh yeah ok…I want a cheeseburger, ansom’ french fries, and a coffee, and uh yeah, OK.”

My toddler, barely able to speak, knew how to order drive-thru.

Oh Boy were we making the grandparents proud.

Should you eat together, at, you know, the dinner table?

In a word, YES.

In a study that was published in 2004 (Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, January issue), children at 31 Minnesota schools were asked questions on how often they ate together as a family, how connected they felt to their family, and to describe their general eating practices. They also recorded their body mass index (BMI) measurement and tracked their progress over 5 years. The study showed significant benefits to gathering together daily for mealtime.

Recent studies published in the Archives of Family Medicine and in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association broadened the list of reasons why a focus on the family should include eating together.

For adolescents, the following benefits, among others, were observed:

• Fostered better nutrition and encouraged healthier eating habits. This included greater overall intake of fiber, iron, calcium, and vitamins B6 and B12, C and E. Children also tended to consume less overall fat.
• Decreased risk substance abuse
• Decreased risk for eating disorders such as bulimia and other unhealthy weight loss practices
• Consumed more fruits and vegetables
• Consumed less prepared/packaged snack foods
• Improved school performance

Obviously, this short list of benefits alone makes it worth the effort. No one wants their kids to have any of these challenges growing up. Eating together is of course no guarantee, but if it helps to increase our chances of simplifying the teen years even slightly, I’ll take it.

Good for the whole family - not just the kids

Eating and cooking together also establishes a family food culture.There are many cultures globally that have made the concept of family synonymous with eating meals together. In my experience, Asian families, Latino families, Italian families - all great examples in general of cultures that have fundamentally incorporated eating together as a family as a culture standard. And there are many, many more. I’d love to hear your experiences as well - please feel free to leave a comment!

Here are a few benefits for the family as a whole:

• Cooking meals together gives you greater control over what you eat and encourages healthy eating habits for all (if you are conscious of those habits for your kids’ sake)
• Trains your children on and how much “normal”actually is, vs. learning this from ad campaigns
• Prompts parents to set the example, which benefits both the kids observing and the parents (if they strive to set a good example)
• Creates your own unique family food culture that builds unity
• Encourages a broadening of the palate and a desire to try new things (in my opinion)
• Creates lifelong memories of eating together that you and your children will cherish later
• Trains children the value of table manners, and reminds parents to use them too (believe me, our 4-year-old watches us like a hawk!)
• Helps kids to be involved with each other lives, building the family unit and familial loyalty, which can be in short supply these days
• Trains children to be gracious when they are away from you: For example, a very “gracious” thing to do is to offer to help to cook or clean up when you share a meal at someone else’s home. If your kids are trained at home, they will know “how” to help.

Food activities you can do as a family

So where do you start? Each family determines there own practices of course, but here is a short list of 10 starting points:

1. Cook together! Young children love to be part of the process, and you will build habits and a closeness that may help later in the “harder” years. In theory, working together with your kids shoulder to shoulder can help to build a strong bond later in life.
2. Teach your kids how to set the table
3. Do the dishes together. Don’t make doing the dishes a punishment - make it part of “what we do” as at mealtime
4. Keep meals simple - cook healthy and easy family meals and teach your kids how to cook them
5. Plan ahead for the days when you don’t feel like cooking. Cook a double batch of a meal, and then freeze the rest so that it can be reheated later. During the preparation, explain the concept to your “helpers”
6. Don’t treat meal times with the TV Dinner mentality. When you eat together, share the same main dishes.
7. Save the discipline and correction for outside the dinner table. Mealtime should be a “safe” time for the family. Dignify your kids by respecting their opinions and ideas.
8. Be consistent! If you are consistent on eating together, it’s not nearly as difficult to convince your kids to sit down together.
9. Be realistic: Your toddler may have a pretty tough time sitting for a half hour at a meal. The important thing is to establish the routine of eating together at the table, even if it is only briefly. In our case for example, with our 3-year old we trained him to sit with us at the table by rewarding him with playing a game of flash cards together after we were done eating. He loved it!
10. Be focused: Time at the table should be treated as a time to really focus on building your family’s culture. Focus on your children’s interests and daily activities. Focus on working together to make the food that you are going to eat, together. You’ve heard it before: Focus on the family.

Big huge disclaimer - “family” doesn’t mean “kids required”

Although this article focuses on families that include children, I firmly believe that you can have a family culture even of only one or two in a household. I think that many of these benefits and healthful practices apply to us as individuals and as couples, children or not. Taking time to eat in a sit-down setting, creating an atmosphere that honors meal times, eating a meal that you have prepared either by yourself, in the company of a partner, or friends and extended family, all yield a greater sense of unity with others globally. More on this in a future article.

Personal note: Some of the most memorable and important meals of my life were had in the company of my extended family, meaning my closest adult friends. April and I will never, ever forget the soulful, life changing evenings of hours spent eating, drinking, laughing, and feverishly debating with those closest to our souls. Spending these moments in the company of our soulmates had a profound impact on me - in fact, those times were part of the inspiration for starting Almost Fit, where I learned what it really meant to enjoy your food on every level, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

J., S., P., and S., we miss you terribly! You know who you are!

Now it’s your turn: What is your family’s food culture?

I’d love to hear from Almost Fit readers on what the portrait of your family eating habits looks like. Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

• Do you eat together as a family?
• What do you define as your family?
• What does eating as a family mean to you?

Thanks again for reading. If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing to Almost Fit. Thanks.

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1. Family Traditions
2. 44 Ways to Lose Weight Without Dieting in 2009
3. Eat Real Food - It’s what your Grandma would do
4. How to get an entire nation cooking
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