September is National Family Meals™ month, and we are celebrating with our annual Family Mealtimes Matter campaign! With our community partners, the Times Union and Cornell Cooperative Extension, we will be sharing recipes, blogs, videos, articles, Facebook posts, tweets and other resources about family meals.
We are all so busy, for many, meals together have been moved out of family schedules. They should be a time to enjoy and connect! Commit to one more meal together as a family each week – the National Family Meals month goal to bring families together with food. You will enjoy family-building benefits that make this investment a lifetime win for parents and children.
Meals don’t have to be perfectly nutritious, or only happen at dinnertime, or even be served on a plate – just being together and sharing food offers everyone big benefits. Children and teens that have frequent family meals:
- Eat more healthfully
- Have a healthier weight, and are less apt to develop eating issues
- Have better social skills
- Have positive peer relationships
- Have lower levels of tension and stress
- Get better grades
- Are likelier to say they can confide in their parents
- Are at half the risk for substance abuse compared to teens who dine infrequently with families
Check out our favorite mealtime resources below!
- https://cms-uat-pch.unataops.com/health_and_wellness/family-meals-matter
- http://albany.cce.cornell.edu/eat-smart-new-york/family-mealtimes-matter
- https://cms-uat-pch.unataops.com/fresh_ideas/kids-cooking-club
- http://www.fmi.org/family-meals-month