Family meals make for good times, nutrition

Sadly, most American meals are not spent dining around the kitchen table. With our hectic lifestyles, we often skip breakfast, try to enjoy lunch from a can, then super-size supper.

We gobble down our food as quickly as we can and rarely do it with our families. Thanks to my personal childhood amnesia, I don’t recall ever having a family — let alone any meals involving sit-down conversations. (Perhaps I was raised by monkeys — which would explain my pure exhilaration I feel when swinging on tree branches.)

Many families have sacrificed cooking for convenience. Meal preparation often consists of quick, last-minute what-do-we-have-in-the-fridge entrees that many times lack any nutritional value. It is no surprise to me, and many other trainers, teachers, counselors, physicians and nutritionists that so much of our society is overweight. The sad part, is the children that are overweight.

Children learn to become obese in an environment that encourages it. When parents are eating poorly — that’s what they are providing for their own children. How healthy are your children? How clean is your own diet?

Parents can give their children access to healthy foods, encourage regular physical activity and demonstrate good habits themselves. Cooking may seem frivolous in your time-obsessed day, but the process stimulates creative time with your children.

Parents must know there is more to a healthy diet than just reducing fast food stops. Take the opportunity to teach your children how to cook and let them experiment in your kitchen. Yes, they will make a mess. Yes, they will break a dish or two. Yes, your kitchen countertops will be cluttered. Yes, your smoke alarm will go off. Yes, your kitchen cabinet doors will be left open. Yes, your fridge will not get shut all the way. Yes, all the lights will be turned on. Yes, the music will be extremely loud. Yes, they will put tinfoil in the microwave just to see what it does. Yes, they will dirty every pan you have. Yes, they will use ingredients that you needed for that third-grade, erupting-volcano project.

Yes, your kitchen floor will need to be swept and mopped and possibly replaced when they have finished. Yes, they will try to grind up a spoon in your garbage disposal. Yes, they will turn on four burners at the same time — just to use one. Yes, you will try to remain calm in the other room while trying to decipher the odor coming from the kitchen … not wanting to admit that they might be secretly cooking the neighbor’s cat. Yes. Yes. Yes. This is real life folks. And. It all happens in just one day.

Natalie Dreger is a certified fitness professional and can be reached at nataliedreger.com.