Is this a common question in your house? I hear it at least 5 times a day- at least 3 of those times come from the same child.
While the meal that I make changes almost every day, our topic of discussion at dinner is usually pretty similar.
Which brings me to my first question: Does your family eat dinner together most nights of the week?
I think this is one very simple thing that families can do to not only lead a healthy lifestyle, but also to set an example for their kids. In our family, this is one non-negotiable rule that we have. We don’t sit in front of the TV; phones, ipods or any electronic equipment is not allowed. We simply sit down at the dinner table and talk to each other.
What do we talk about? The topics vary, but usually we talk about the events of the day and upcoming activities for the next day. Which usually leads us into a conversation surrounding health. I realize that we all have our own definition of what this is, but our dinner table has 2 pharmacists and 2 young athletes. So our family definition is one of exercise, clean & healthy food and a mind made healthy through our spiritual life and learning. But our dinner conversation usually revolves around exercise and food.
Each member of our family does different things for our physical activity. My husband is a trail runner who is currently training for his first Ultra race (50K), my oldest daughter does crew and cross country skiing, my youngest plays competitive soccer and I train myself with High Intensity Interval Training(HIIT) or strength building workouts. We all recognize that in order to be able to do our respective activities, we must fuel and nourish our bodies.
The other night I didn’t feel like cooking (does anyone else ever feel like that?) and I made a simple cheese tortellini with marinara sauce plus a chopped salad. My youngest daughter asked, as she often does, “Mommy, is this healthy?”
I then proceed to explain to her each part of our dinner and why it was or was not healthy. The explanation went something like this:
“Well, pasta filled with cheese is not extremely healthy because the pasta has no real nutritional value- there is no fiber, no protein, just starch. We don’t eat it very often, so it’s ok once in a while.”
“The cheese is ok in small amounts because our bodies need some fat, but we don’t want to each too much of it. But cheese can be good because it has protein.”
“The sauce is good for you because it has tomatoes which is a fruit/vegetable (a whole other discussion in and of itself) plus it has lots of nutritional vitamins and stuff.”
“And of course salad is always healthy if we don’t drown it in dressing. This salad has mixed greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, red onion, celery and roasted pepitas. Instead of dressing, I drizzled avocado oil and sprinkled it with salt and pepper.”
Her response to all of this was: “So, I shouldn’t put ranch dressing on it because that wouldn’t be healthy, right?”
Right.
And that’s what we had for dinner that night.