Mrs.Letsz

Benefits of Eating a Healthy Family Dinner
By- Justin Patric Johnson
` Eating A healthy family dinner can keep children out of trouble in and outside of school. Having family gives children an opportunity to discuss their issues instead of hiding behind them. Most parents don’t listen to their kids problems because they see it as normal teenage drama so they chose to ignore it. Therefore with a lack of attention from a parent the children can go out and decide to take their neglect out in the streets in acts of violence. Once parents realize the fault in their listening skills. Their child’s situation worsens and its hard to regain a bond with your son/daughter.
` Any normal parents excuse is they are tiered or they don’t have the time to eat with their family and spend quality time. No matter what (In My Opinion), a parent should always make time at least an hour to keep an ear open for their children . Every kid should always make the time to spend time with parents, you cant always hang out with your friend because most of the time your friends around all your life. A family can be as simple by “How was your day.” Or “Is everything okay?”. The more quality time with families creates a positive image in a child that allows them to feel secure about telling their parents any of their problems. In Research done by Martha Marino, MA, RD, CD and
Sue Butkus, PhD, RD. Studies show the following. Benefits of Eating Together.
Communication. In a series of focus groups conducted with low-income program participants by the Nutrition Education Network of Washington participants said they believed that the primary benefit to eating together was strengthening the family by providing opportunities for communication and building relationships (11). Other studies report similar perceptions on the part of parents (12).Not only do parents want to feel attached to their kids, kids want this too. Oprah Winfrey conducted a "Family Dinner Experiment" in 1993 (13,14). Five families volunteered to accept the challenge to eat dinner together every night for a month, staying at the table for a half-hour each time. As part of the experiment, all family members kept journals to record their feelings about the experience. At first, sharing meals was a chore for many families and the minutes at the table dragged on. But, by the end of the month, the families were happy and planned to continue dining together most evenings if not every night. When the families appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show at the end of the experiment, the greatest surprise to the parents was how much their children treasured the dependable time with their parents at the table. Better school performance. Family meals appear to give children an edge in the classroom. In a 1994 Louis Harris and Associates survey of 2000 high school seniors (15), students took a test to measure their academic ability and answered a list of personal questions. Students who regularly ate dinner with their families 4 or more times a week scored better than those who ate family dinners 3 or fewer times a week. These results crossed racial lines and were a greater indicator than whether the child was in a one- or two-parent family. Sometimes a family meal can be dangerous to the youth because some parents cant relate to their children. Therefore parents