By Sharon Wilkerson-Gilpin

Imagine coming home from work and calling your kids into the kitchen to help you chop veggies, turkey and cheese for a chef salad.  They dash into the kitchen with smiles.  They’re eager to talk with you about their day at school.  You have fun preparing a delicious healthy meal together at dinnertime!

Talking with your family while preparing and eating healthy foods can help to nurture mind, body and spirit at dinnertime.

Cooking and eating healthy foods and getting kids involved in preparing them are two of many tips noted in Share the Table: The Importance of Dinnertime in America, a study by Dr. William J. Doherty.  The study, commissioned by family-owned food company, Barilla, also offered these tips for family meals:

1. Talking and listening more at the table
2. Eating together more often
3. Eliminating distractions
4. Creating dinner theme nights

Benefits of Family Dinners: Nurturing Healthy and Strong Families

Kids who eat three or more times a week with their families are more likely to be in a healthy weight range and have healthier eating patterns, studies show.  They’re also less likely to have an eating disorder, and they’re less likely to eat unhealthy foods.

The Family Dinner Project, a group which researches the benefits of family dinners, summarizes the benefits:

1. Better academic performance
2. Higher self esteem
3. Greater sense of resilience
4. Lower risk of substance abuse
5. Lower risk of teen pregnancy
6. Lower risk of depression
7. Lower rates of obesity

Teens, especially, benefit from eating meals with their families.  While they’re approaching young adulthood, they need the emotional, spiritual and physical support of their families.

Teens who eat with their families at least five times a week are 40 percent more likely to get A’s and B’s in school, studies show.  They’re also 66 percent less likely to try marijuana, 59 percent less likely to smoke cigarettes and 42 percent less likely to drink alcohol, studies also show.

Why not consider clean eating at the family dinner table?  What is clean eating?  Clean eating involves eating healthy foods that are as close as possible to their natural state, according to the Mayo Clinic.  It means eating foods rich in vitamins, minerals, high quality protein and healthy fats like fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, lean meats/proteins, grains and dairy products.  

Preparing and serving healthy foods at family mealtime provides our families with abundant ways to enjoy a healthy lifestyle.  It can also help our kids to adopt healthy lifestyles early in life that will equip them to teach their families to live healthier lives too!