Family Dinner Survey: Some Early Results

Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed thus far to our Family Dinner Survey. The response has been great. (You can still take the survey if you missed it!)

One of my goals with the survey is to gain more insight into the challenges that people face in trying to accomplish family dinner on a nightly basis. I also hope to better understand why people value family dinner and what they see as its most important benefits.  I hope to get a wide range of experience from respondents: families that find family dinner impossible and those who are more successful at it. We can learn from all kinds of experiences about the best strategies to help families.

Usually research surveys unfold over months, and this effort is barely a week old, so these are preliminary results. Still, some interesting ideas are emerging from the survey responses.

1. Family dinner time is the time to connect, and eat healthy foods.
Overwhelmingly, the most often stated reason that family dinner is important is "family dinners give us a time to connect and be together." The next most popular response, thus far, is that "family dinner makes it easier to make sure my children are eating healthy food." Somewhat surprisingly, parents were less likely to report that "keeping kids off drugs" or "doing well in school" were their most important reasons for family dinner. This is interesting because much of the academic research community pushes these benefits as the most salient to parents.

The message here is that, for many people, family dinner is about creating connections with partners and children TODAY. Family dinner is about getting kids to eat healthy foods NOW. Forward projections of how it might benefit kids many years down the road may not be foremost on the minds of busy parents. Family dinner can build a great foundation for kids as they grow up, and thus can keep them focused on school and off drugs, but the results and benefits of family dinner can be seen immediately among these respondents.

2. The Best Strategy for Having Family Dinner: Make the Commitment.
The vast majority of respondents said the most helpful strategy for accomplishing family dinner was making a conscious decision to commit to it. This beat out every other reason, although knowing how to cook quick meals at home was another very popular choice. This mirrors my personal experience. There have been times when family dinner just seemed too hard, especially when the kids were little and demanding work schedules pulled at all of us. As a family, though, we decided that family dinner was too important to let slip by; we compromised and found a way to make it work. We eat late; we share the cooking and the clean up; we found a way. Merely taking the step and deciding that family dinner has value for you and your kids turns out to be critical.

3. Family Dinner is "Extremely Important" even for those who manage it 2 or less nights a week.
This is a "family dinner" survey, so most of the people who are motivated to take the survey had  high opinions of family dinner. Not a surprise, really. What surprised me, though, was that the respondents who rarely had family dinner (that is 1 or 2 nights a week, or never) still felt like it was "extremely important." Honestly I was expecting a little backlash! To me, this indicates that families want HELP making dinner, and family time, happen. This is something that parents want to do. Families could use  more support and less blame as we promote healthy eating and healthy habits for kids. This is an important message for educators, policymakers and researchers.

More to come....
I am just scratching the surface of the data here. There is a lot more in the survey to learn from and to share, and I hope to keep collecting data. So many people were interested in learning about the results, though, I wanted to give a hint at some preliminary findings. Keep checking back for more analysis.

A Note on the Survey Sample:
For the record, this survey is not scientific because the sample selection was not randomized. In fact, outreach was biased due to the nature of the data collection. Surveys were administered in person at school health fairs and workshops dedicated to healthy eating. The survey was also administrated online, with promotion through agents who are expressly interested in food, parenting or healthy behavior. The results were analyzed qualitatively to assess individual opinions about family dinner, and any cited statistics are not representative of the population at large. To date, the survey has been administered in Brooklyn, NY, in South Dakota, and online.

So why even do this survey, if it's not scientific or randomized? Well, I think that we have to get information about family dinner and its challenges from real parents who are on the "frontlines" of making healthy choices for their kids. Even in a biased sample, we can learn lessons about people's experiences that are valid and important; we just have to be careful not to generalize.

We will keep the survey open and available on the Eatdinner.org website and here. Please feel free to add your own experience and share the link with others!

Survey Says: What do you Think About Family Dinner?

Click here to take The Family Dinner Survey

One of the goals of eatdinner.org is to understand the challenges of families coming together at the table and to provide resources to help and support them. Our Family Dinner Survey has just been launched and is designed to collect information from parents, and anyone else who takes the time to sit down at the table for dinner, about the biggest challenges they face to making dinner happen. The survey also collects information on why family dinner is important and the best strategies that people use to accomplish it night after night. We know, family dinner is an accomplishment!

The survey is available online and I'm also collecting data at several family workshops held in New York City. Thanks to friends like Time at the Table, we are able to gather information from workshops being held throughout the country. Please let me know if you'd like a copy of the Family Dinner survey to share at your own workshop or meetings. Since the survey brings up topics of healthy eating, daily family challenges and positive strategies like menu planning and cooking, it's a great starting off point to get people thinking about issues that might be relevant to your workshop.

Please feel free to share this survey widely (share this link http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GBR78C5) or contact me offline to discuss using a paper survey in your work (Email me: grace [at] eatdinner [dot] org). Thank you!

The survey is completely confidential and the data will be aggregated to show trends in opinions, not any one person's opinion or experience. 

What I Learned on the Way to the Health Fair

Last week, I talked to parents at the first of a series of spring health workshops that eatdinner.org is involved in. Parents were eager to learn more about healthy choices for their kids, despite where they fell along the spectrum of healthy eating behavior. One mom talked to me about her fight to get her child to even try a whole grain bagel, with a tone that suggested she was losing the battle. Another said she offered healthy foods every day and her kids happily ate everything, but she was always in need of fresh ideas. One grandma said that her grandkids wouldn't touch anything but mac and cheese and chicken nuggets, and that she was going to pick up all my handouts to give to her daughter anyway. All typical challenges that parents face.

Every single person I talked to was relieved to just chat about ideas and solutions, rather than having me lecture them about strict "right" and "wrongs." I began many sentences with "I'm a parent, I know how hard it can be...." or "My youngest is the pickiest, but here is what worked for us..." Happily other parents also joined in the discussion, sharing tricks and tips, including some ideas that were new to me.

Understanding the real challenges of parents and meeting them where they cannot be underrated.  If we are going to engage parents to improve their children's eating habits, it boils down to this:

What parents need to be empowered:

• Validation of their efforts. 
• Support, not guilt (Believe me, moms have enough guilt already!)
• Positive activities, like family dinner, to encourage healthy eating with their kids
• Good, unbiased information on health choices
• New ideas for snacks and family-friendly dinner recipes

One of the messages of this blog is that parents are powerful. True, parents are harried, busy and sometimes confused over the various health choices they face for their kids. Nonetheless, parents have more influence than they think in setting good examples and making the right choices for their kids. Let's work with parents as allies, giving them what they need to make the best choices for their kids. That's one way to make in-roads in the huge problem of childhood obesity and poor nutrition among kids.


Resources and Handouts:
In addition to promoting the benefits of family dinner, I talked about healthy snacks for kids and healthy portion sizes. Here are links to some of the material I used.

25 Healthy Snacks for Kids  From eatright.org, American Dietetic Association

Help Your Child Stay at a Healthy Weight From healthfinder.gov

Family Friendly Blogs with Recipes From eatdinner.org

Rainbow Stew from Aviva Goldfarb, PBS Kitchen Explorers

Today I Ate a Rainbow Kit (15% off with discount code: eatdinner until April 15, 2011)

Fruits and Veggies More Matters website

12 Smart Ways to Right-Size Your Portions From EatSmartMoveMoreNC.org, found on www.wellnessproposals.com

Family Dinner as One Solution to Childhood Obesity: Vote for us on The Hive

Eat Dinner As a Family! My proposal (naturally) on Slate's The Hive: Time to Trim.

Slate is highlighting the issue of childhood obesity and is currently soliciting "brilliant ideas" to combat the problem on The Hive. The data are real and frightening, and this epidemic is not going to be solved by silly disputes over bake sales. Real change in how people eat, exercise and live their lives is needed and, no doubt, many solutions should come into play to address this complex problem.

Change can begin almost immediately, though, at the dinner table. It can change how we teach children about food and the importance we put on the communal meal. Frequent family dinners have been associated with better nutrition (more consumption of fruits and vegetables), better body weight management for kids and adults, and less "disordered" eating. By finding effective ways to promote and support family dinner, we can help parents create healthy life-long eating habits for themselves and their kids. Engaging and empowering parents will go a long way in this fight against childhood obesity.

I believe in the power of family dinner and in the power of parents to make the right choices given adequate information and support. That's what eatdinner.org is all about.

Please read my proposal and VOTE! Spread the word about family dinner!

Five Tips for Making Dinner Happen

This week held a lot of discussion on family dinner and how to make it work, inspired in part by Pete Wells' column about the difficulties of pulling it off. I wrote an open letter to Pete, and eatdinner.org was featured twice for my advocacy for family dinner, on The Lunch Tray and on the Love You More blogs. (Thank you!) Through the magic of the Internet (aka links), I found some other great folks that are singing the same tune.

Here's hoping that the family dinner discussion encourages parents not to wave the white flag, but to embrace the kitchen and the merits of family dinner.  Family dinner does take time and commitment, and it isn't always fun, but it's so worth it in the end. Much like parenting, no?

Here's 5 more tips to add to my list. 

Five MORE Tips for Making Family Dinner Happen

1. Plan ahead. If you can plan and shop a week ahead, that's great. But even just making a plan in the morning, at your lunch hour, or via email or text with your spouse, can help.  Having a ready answer a when the kids cry "What's for dinner?" will take the pressure off as you walk in the door and help you feel more in control.

2. Have back-pocket, straight-out of the pantry recipes that you can whip up without thinking. There are many simple pasta sauces that can be made with just a few at-hand ingredients. Memorize a few, and you'll have dinner even on crazy days. Your goal should be 5 to 10 recipes you can make in 20 or 30 minutes. Use the weekends to learn new recipes or to make large batches of favorite meals.

3. Fresh is great, but don't fear the freezer.  In addition to frozen meals and leftovers you make yourself, there are healthy frozen food options out there, but check the ingredients!  Frozen veggies or fruit (for dessert) can be a life-saver to round out a meal nutritionally. Don't forget you can "freeze your own." We often pre-cut a large package of meat (chicken, beef, pork) into stir-fry sized pieces that can be quickly defrosted and put into weeknight meals.

4. Resist ordering take-out or buying drive-thru, if you can. If you can whip up a meal in 30 minutes, it will be on the table way before the pizza guy arrives. Cooking a simple meal at home is way better for you and cheaper too.

5. Use the web for inspiration! There are so many great food blogs out there, many with quick easy recipes for families. Also, Google just came out with a Recipe View that looks promising. Type in a cooking idea, or even a holiday or theme, and get recipe suggestions, complete with ingredient list and cooking times. Very cool!

Check out these blogs or find others that you trust and keep checking for new ideas.  (If you like any of these, send the author some love via the comments sections! Bloggers love that, really!)

Red, Round or Green Lots of great stuff on family meals, meal planning and recipes. Her recent post on how she does it: plan, plan, plan.
Stay at Stove Dad. Great recipes and perspective as a dad who cooks for his family. New book coming out in May!
Friday Fan Club: Great Blogs for Family Dinner Recipes A recent eatdinner.org round-up of recipe sites I like.

Dear Pete Wells ("Cooking with Dexter"): Family Dinner Is Worth It.

Pete Wells has written a great column for the New York Times called "Cooking With Dexter" that I loved mainly because he seemed like a real Dad investigating the world of the kitchen with his son Dexter. He wrote warmly of the new discoveries that father and son would make in the kitchen, about food, about themselves. Wells wrote his last column this week and is off to other projects. I'm sad to see the column go, but his last missive really hit home for other reasons.


Wells talks to the real and true challenges of getting dinner on the table every night as a dual working parent family, and then, kind of shrugs it off as too damn hard. ARGH! I understand his struggles, I do. But I also want to shout: "No, no, no!" Family dinner can be admittedly damned hard, but it is worth it. 


One of the messages of eatdinner.org is not to expect perfection and not to be so hard on yourself, but to make a commitment to family dinner. You have to find the right balance for your family, and that balance is going to change over time, as work demands change and as your kids grow. When your kids are little, it is honestly the hardest time to get dinner on the table in a timely fashion before they unravel. The strategy in our family is to have healthy snacks available and to have many 20-minute dinners under our belts. As the kids get older, the routine and expectation of family dinner, be it with both parents or only one, will be the touchstone of their lives, and yours. Don't give that up. Cut yourself some slack, but keep plugging away.

I was encouraged, though, by the numerous commenters on the NYT site (well over 100), many who call Wells to task. The sentiments were, basically, "Hey, Pete, family dinner is well worth it and here are some things we do in our family that can help." I love that so many people wanted to help Wells and his family with practical strategies and advice. This is the conversation that we need to be having: what can busy parents do to help make this thing work. I also think we need a national conversation about a life-work balance that allows enough flexibility for parents to make a dinner commitment with their families. But that's another story.

Thanks to The Lunch Tray who wrote a blog post (2.21.11) that paralleled many of my feelings and spurred me to write my own response here. (Through the time shifting force of the Internet, I actually read the Wells' Sunday piece on Friday, and tweeted about it, but hadn't gotten my thoughts together enough to respond. And of course the kids are off school this week!)

I Heart Fruit, Straight Up from Kindergarten

Fruit Heart from my little Kindergartner

My 5 year old daughter brought this drawing home yesterday from school. It may be a bit hard to make out, but it's a pink heart surrounding a fruit bowl. Before I could ask her what it was about, she excitedly reported that they were having a contest to name the school's salad bar and that she decided it to make this, because "I L-O-V-E all the fruits!" Wow, even if I didn't spend all day trying to promote healthy family eating, I think I would be bursting with pride.

I would like to take all the credit for my kid loving fruit, but remember she's the "picky one." So I dare not or I might jinx myself and we'll be back to mac and cheese requests every night. Really, though, I think kids naturally love fruit and simple exposure to good, fresh, in-season fruit will convince most kids to eat it with joy. We as parents (and educators at school) have to decide that fresh fruit is a worthwhile snack than can be available all the time, despite its slightly higher cost and perishable nature.

We have a rule in our house The fruit bowl is always open.  I try to have 2 or 3 big bowls of fruit out on the counter in easy access all the time. Honestly it disappears. Standards are bananas, apples, and, now, clementines; I keep washed grapes in a big bowl in the fridge. For dessert, we'll sometimes have harder to prepare fruit like mango, pineapple, or last night, we had starfruit, which tastes a bit like kiwi, but in a really cool shape. My kids also love berries and whipped cream, which is still a healthy dessert option. The fruit balances out the whipped cream by far!

Starfruit, cool shape.

The biggest complaint I hear about fruit is the cost. Fresh fruit can be expensive. But really, if you compared fruit to most cookies or pre-packaged snacks, they are very comparable in price. Most cookies are at least 3 or 4 dollars a box; if you cost out the packaged snacks, most are 50 cents or $1 a piece. Somehow it's OK for a cookie pack to cost this much, but an apple at 75 cents is too expensive? Really, we have to change our mind set. Reducing packaged foods is the real way to cut a grocery bill, and sticking with fresh fruits and vegetables often will end up being comparable in cost, or even cheaper, and much healthier to boot.

Fruit is perishable, though, and I understand that busy parents who go shopping only once a week don't want to throw good money away. Below I have some tips for buying and storing fruit, and plus ideas for getting your child to eat more of it!

Ten Tips for Buying, Storing and Eating Fruit:
1. Buy fruit in varying stages of ripeness, if you can. Ideally, some fruit will be ready the day you buy it, and some fruit will ripen over the week, so that you and your kids can eat the best fruit as it becomes ripe.
2. If freshness is waning but the fruit is still good, stick it in the fridge. This will help it keep another couple of days.
3. Don't forget about fruit in the fridge! Since the kids may not see it to grab it, you may have to remember to cut it up and serve as snacks, or with breakfast.
3. In general, fruit keeps better unwashed. Teach your kids to give it a rinse before eating.
4. Use an apple corer. For some reason, fruit slices are much more enjoyable for snacking. Once I bought an apple corer, my kids' apple consumption doubled! Also keep the skin on because it has lots of vitamins. If the apple is cored, a skin hater can still just eat the inside, though half the time, my daughter still eats the whole slice, skin and all.
5. Slightly damaged fruit can be saved to use in smoothies or in fruit sauce. I cut out the brown parts and either freeze or, if I have enough, I throw in a pot to make sauce for pancakes. One or two apples or pears with a little water and sugar can make a quick and delicious sauce to be used for a weekend pancakes.
6. Many fresh fruits can be frozen at home. If strawberries are on sale, you can buy two packages and freeze one. They don't taste quite as good defrosted, but they are still good for you and can be used frozen in smoothies or thawed over cereal or in a fruit dessert.
7. Figure out the fruits that your kids like and always get them. Fruit should be like milk and bread, something you always get. Make it a new habit. Don't get stuck thinking your kid doesn't like fruit just because they don't like the red delicious apples at the cafeteria. (In case you didn't know, red delicious apples mostly stink; they are the biggest misnomer in the fruit world!) Gala apples are kid favorites, so are golden delicious, but there are lots of other varieties to explore.
8. Add new fruits every once in a while to expand their interest. Right now, there are lots of choices in citrus, so try some varieties of oranges that you haven't before. Tangelos and blood oranges can be amazing and you may be surprised that kids actually like the sour-sweet combination. (There are some popular candies on the market that exploit this.)
9. Fruit is best when it is local and in-season. In season fruit tends to be cheaper and taste the best. But in the winter time, it may not be possible to only eat locally, and still actually eat fruit. As a mom and as someone who promotes healthy eating, I am still in favor of eating fruit year around.
10. Increase the times you give fruit to your child. Fruit can be served with breakfast, packed in lunches, and offered for dessert. It's not just an in-between snack.

More great resources for learning more and making eating fruit and veggies fun!
Today I Ate a Rainbow Kit This kit that encourages your kid to get eat the colors of the rainbow, everyday.
The Produce Geek: Sign up for weekly newsletter on what to eat now.
Fruits and Veggies More Matters website has lots of tips and ideas for increasing the number of fruits and veggies in your life.