Why You Need To Make Time For Family Dinners

4. Portion Control Is Easier

If you eat out regularly, or don’t pay that much attention when you’re eating meals thanks to your phone, a newspaper, or the television, there’s a pretty good chance your portion sizes are incorrect. However, when you eat at the dinner table, with your family, it’s easy to have a more mindful experience of eating. Also, when we eat dinners in our own home, instead of out at an eatery, it’s easier for us to control portions with smaller plates and servings. This is the opposite of what happens when food is served to us, as we tend to eat what we’re presented with.

5. Stronger Family Ties, Stronger Kids

Just as strong family ties helps kids in overcoming the issues that they face, so too can strong family ties help them in shrugging off the effects of peer pressure. An American study discovered that teenagers who eat dinner with their family five times a week at least have a much lower chance of smoking, drinking, or using drugs. While substance abuse can happen to any family, the strong relationships that parents can build with kids over family dinners are an effective way to fight against it.

6. Might Make Kids Smarter

The family meal is really such a great thing. Not only does it strengthen relationships, and offer a space for easy conversation, it might also make your kids smarter. Why? Well studies have found that kids who eat regularly with their families bring in better report cards, likely because they have a regular opportunity to talk with adults, pick up adult vocabulary and have adult conversations. Pretty impressive.

7. Saves You Money

Of course one of the biggest reasons to embrace the family dinner is that it saves families tonnes of money. Eating out, relying on takeaway and convenience foods, and generally not making that big of a deal about a regular family dinner is an expensive business. In most places in Australia, the cost of taking a family of four out to eat will be double or even triple the cost of them eating at home. Yes, there is some extra effort associated with home-cooked meals, but they’re definitely worth it in the end!

Do you eat dinner as a family?

Clare Whitfield Chief Editor

Clare Whitfield is the Editor of Stay at Home Mum and a recognised voice in practical home management for Australian families. Based in the northern suburbs of Sydney, she balances editorial leadership with life as a stay at home mum to two school age children. Her background in home economics and more than a decade of experience in recipe development, family budgeting, and household systems inform her work.

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