Why healthy family meals are important

In association with SuperSavvyMe

We have always eaten our evening meals together as a family. Working from home until recently this was an easy and obvious thing to do, really, but I have arranged my hours now that I go out to work so that I am almost always home to have dinner with Chris and the girls.

Benefits of eating together as a family

There are lots of benefits to eating together as a family. Some parents feel that eating with their children would mean having to give up eating interesting and flavoursome food. But instead, what it means is having the wonderful opportunity of sharing interesting and flavoursome food with your children. It doesn’t guarantee they’ll like everything, or that they won’t go through the ‘Yuck!’ phase, but it will mean they will try more foods and be more interested in different foods.

Another benefit is language development, from a very early age. Ever since they were babies, the girls have sat with us. Before they were eating solids themselves, they would often sit on our laps watching us eat and listening to us talk about our days, or things we’d seen on the news or news from friends and family. Being a witness to, and then a part of, regular conversations is really, really important for children’s language development.

Now I work outside of the home, these meals are even more important to me, because they are the first time I get to hear about everyone’s days. The girls are often so keen to tell me about what they did at school or playgroup or nursery or Granny’s that they have to take turns to avoid fights. In fact, sometimes Chris is also desperate to talk about his day – and he also has to wait his turn! Now and then I might even get to tell them about something I did, like the time a dog ate my lunch!

Making sure you share healthy family meals

While we are not totally averse to quick and easy meals, like eggs, chips and beans, pizza or a fast pasta and jar of sauce, the majority of the time we eat, home cooked healthy family meals, which are jam-packed with nutrition – vitamins from fresh vegetables (often from the market), high-protein grains or pulses (current favourites are quinoa, buckwheat, barley and butter beans), and lots of flavours from spices and herbs in the right mix. Chris will often make some high-protein meat or fish dish, such as a stew or roast chicken, and the girls will often have some of each, but we’ll also frequently have a single vegetarian meal, that everyone enjoys.

It doesn’t need to take hours to prepare healthy family meals (though I do enjoy it when I have the time to spend a couple of hours preparing something really sumptuous, like the lasagne I made on my annual leave at the end of the summer holidays). Lots of stews and soups involve only 15 minutes’ preparation and then they cook for an hour or so while you get on with other things. I’m really looking forward to lots of delicious beany casseroles and chunky vegetable stews through the autumn and winter. In the summer, a salad can be thrown together in 10 minutes, and you can add cheese or boiled eggs for protein, or a handful of rinsed tinned beans or lentils. Cheesy pasta with added frozen peas takes about 15 minutes in total and is delicious and good for you (if a little heavy on the carbs and fat).

Do you eat family meals together? Do you only get to do it at weekends, because of working hours?

In association with SuperSavvyMe