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By Mom Unplugged, September 18, 2007 10:15 pm

I read on Mama’s Moon (Monday Morning Munchies) that this week is National Eat Dinner Together Week. National Eat Dinner Together Week was inaugurated in 1996 by America’s Pork Producers and the National Pork Board. Despite the meaty sponsor, even vegetarians can participate in this (hopefully) worthy venture.

I started out researching this post thinking I could cite one, or maybe two studies and have the information all there for you. But, apparently there are many studies that each contribute a few small aspects to the big picture.

Being a terminal nerd, I hate it when an article says “studies say…” without giving a citation. What I learned in one hour of research however, is that if I wanted to spend an entire year on this post (which I can assure you, I don’t) I could.

So this time I shall just have to overcome my natural nerdy tendencies and simply say, here are five benefits of kids and parents / parent eating dinner together at least five times per week. It all makes logical sense to me:

1) Better nutrition. In most cases, kids eat better at home (less fast food and junk). Plus they learn better dietary habits.

2) Kids do better in school and are less likely to use drugs and alcohol (for the whole study, click here).

3) Family dinner creates an automatic “check-in” time. Kids must be home and available to talk about their day.

4) Dinnertime conversation helps with language skills (and, on a personal note, I would have to add - table manners, an important, but often overlooked skill these days).

5) Spending time together as a family creates happy memories (hopefully!) and family bonding.

On the flip side: If your family is really dysfunctional, studies show that perhaps family mealtimes might not be so beneficial.

Some good advice for everyone, whether dysfunctional or not, is to focus on open-ended questions and not discuss super sensitive topics at the table. If you ask an open-ended question it is always very telling to see where kids will take it, and can lead to some valuable exchanges of information.

Of course it easy for me, mother of three children age 7 and under to pontificate on the virtues of family meals. Those of you with active teenagers may be wondering how to fit family meals in along with sports, cheerleading, play practice, dance, music and whatever else kids do these days.

I have my own views on the drawbacks of overscheduling children’s lives, but since my children are so young, it is hard for me to provide much practical advice on how to avoid this all-to-common phenomenon. If anyone has successfully managed to escape the vicious cycle of teen activities, please feel free to speak up in the comments or an email. I am eager to take notes for the future!

Some links for further information:

The 5 Benefits-and a Few Risks-of Eating Together at the Dinner Table

Family Mealtimes: More Than Just Eating Together

Eat Better, Eat Together: Background Research on Family Meals

And, on a lighter note, don’t miss this quick post on the perils of dining with three children age 4 and under: The Benefits of Eating Together from the blog Jumping Monkeys.

Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer cohdra for this photo.

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By Mom Unplugged, August 13, 2007 11:00 am

This is old news now (about one week old) but I MUST blog about it. A study by Dr. Thomas Robinson, the director of the Center for Healthy Weight at Packard Children’s Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics and of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine has found that children ages 3 to 5 tend to prefer the taste of food that comes in a McDonald’s wrapper over identical food which does not.

Dr. Robinson’s research team gave 63 children, ages 3 to 5, the following foods: chicken nuggets, a hamburger, french fries (all from McDonald’s) as well as baby carrots and milk (from the grocery store). Each child received two portions of each food. One portion was wrapped in a McDonald’s wrapper or bag, the other was in a plain wrapper. The children overwhelmingly preferred the food in the McDonald’s wrapper over the identical food in the plain wrapper.

Dr. Robinson says:

“Kids don’t just ask for food from McDonald’s, they actually believe that the chicken nugget they think is from McDonald’s tastes better than an identical, unbranded nugget.”

Other interesting (and frightening) findings of the study are the following facts about the children:

- One third of the children ate at McDonald’s more than once a week.

- More than three-quarters had McDonald’s toys at home

- They had an average of 2.4 televisions in their homes

- More than one-half the children had a TV in their rooms! (Wow! These kids are only 3 to 5 years-old!!!)

Discussing his findings, which seem to link TV-viewing with a preference for McDonald’s, Dr. Robinson said:

“We found that kids with more TVs in their homes and those who eat at McDonald’s more frequently were even more likely to prefer the food in the McDonald’s wrapper. This is a company that knows what they’re doing. Nobody else spends as much to advertise their fast-food products to children.”

This frightening placebo effect of food preference in children seems to me to be yet another argument in favor of placing some sort of limit on food marketing to kids. If you want to read a bit more about about recent efforts to put limits on food ads targeted to kids, please read my June 25th post Food Marketing to Kids.

So, in case anyone still had a doubt, kids as young as ages 3 to 5 can be successfully “branded” by large corporations spending billions on TV advertising targeted at young viewers.

OK. On a lighter note, I think I’d better stock up on McDonald’s wrappers for a proper presentation of my A-list brussels sprouts to my children. “Hey kids, did you know McDonald’s now serves brussels sprouts? Yum!!!!!”

The study: Effects of Fast Food Branding on Young Children’s Taste Preferences appearing in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medecine, Vol. 161 No. 8, August 2007

(You can read an article about the study at the Washington Post online: Foods Taste Better With McDonald’s Logo, Kids Say.)

Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer spress for the “Good Food” photo.

Comments (3)

By Mom Unplugged, July 3, 2007 8:33 am

One of the many great things about TV-free kids is that they really like to be outdoors. In the nice weather, my two oldest children are outdoors almost all the time. Without TV and video games, there is nothing much for them to sit around doing indoors. Besides - the lure of trees, rocks, bugs, bikes, scooters, swing sets, and “clubhouses” is too great.

In fact, last week I was very pleased that my children chose to go “sploring” outside (as my 5 year-old son calls it) despite being offered the opportunity to watch “Sprout” on TV at my sister’s house when we were there to have dinner. They climbed trees, found bugs, and moved sticks and rocks from “point A” to “point B.”

Several weeks ago, whymommy linked to a Washington Post article entitled Getting Lost in the Great Indoors. The basic point of the article is that today’s kids don’t like to go outdoors, unless the purpose is an organized activity such as soccer or Little League. They would rather be indoors with TV’s, computers, and video games.

A 2005 Kaiser Family Foundation study found that children ages 8 to 18 spend 6.5 hours a day on television, electronic games, computers, music and other media, with many multitasking electronically.

Here is a telling quote from the Washington Post article:

“In Great Falls, the Hefner family has a back yard of more than an acre, a green swath of kid heaven at the edge of Great Falls National Park. Three years ago, George Hefner, a general contractor who knows how to work a saw, built a two-story “treehouse” that stands on the ground between two leafy maples.

He imagined his children fixing it up, sleeping there.

But 10-year-old Paul cannot remember the last time he played in the little house. ‘Animals live out there, you know,’ he told his mother one day. His older sister Sarah, 16, admits that she has never set foot in it. ‘What would I do in a treehouse?’ she asked.”

According to the article, getting kids outdoors is a new venue for activists. There have been Capitol Hill hearings, state legislative action, grass-roots projects, and even a U.S. Forest Service initiative.

This recent public concern appears to be partly inspired by a book entitled Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. This post may be a tad premature since I have not yet read Mr. Louv’s book. It remains on my “To Read” list. However Mother Rising wrote an interesting post about it, that makes me want to read it all the more! (Has anyone else out there read it yet?)

The book seems to be creating public awareness of a trend that many parents have been noticing for quite a while. In addition to the obvious culprits, TV and other electronics, the article also suggests that parental fears of leaving children unattended, more working mothers, and more organized sports may also be to blame.

It does seem that today’s kids are so overscheduled that there may be little time left for unstructured outdoor play. Overscheduling is something I would like to avoid if possible, but the lure of fun, educational activities is always there to tempt parents (a struggle I wrote about here: The 6 Year-Old and her Executive Secretary).

It is so sad to me that we need grass roots initiatives and Congressional hearings (not to mention the $20 million that 40 “civic leaders” are trying to raise to fund 20 country-wide initiatives) all simply to encourage kids to go outdoors.

I am fortunate to live in a small town. If I lived in a big city apartment it would obviously be much harder to get my kids outside. I wouldn’t be able to simply release them into the backyard. We would have to depend on family trips to the park, the country, etc. I do realize how lucky I am.

However, there are plenty of families who do have the ideal safe, kid-friendly yard (such as the family quoted above) and who nonetheless have problems getting the kids outside. My advice is to try turning off the TV and putting away the video games. You don’t need a $20 million initiative to get your kids outdoors! Just allow them to “be bored” and see what happens.

Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer ximenez.