Cooking for Busy Families: Mindful Meals in a Fast-Paced World
We’re quickly approaching back-to-school season, and many are already thinking “how is my family going to survive our crazy fall schedule?!"
April Ho, RD, CPT, dietitian manager at UR Medicine’s Center for Community Health & Prevention, hears from plenty of parents this time of year who wonder how they can achieve easy weeknight dinners for their family that everyone enjoys.
“Societal norms and pressures have made it nearly impossible to give this essential task of eating the proper space and time it deserves,” said Ho.
Ho shares ways to restore joy, peace, and meaning to the act of eating – even amidst a culture that constantly has us scrambling.
How To Get Started: Establish Your Family’s Food Values
Do you value ...
- Family meals/connecting with loved ones around food
- Health/nutrition
- Local sustainable food sourcing
- Convenience
- Affordability
Recognize that you may not be able to demonstrate these values at every single meal, but if you can work toward aligning your eating patterns with your core values, even intermittently, you will start to notice the benefits.
Crazy sports schedules may mean that having a sit-down, homemade dinner with the whole family does not happen every day, but could it happen once per week?
Try making a plan for how you might start incorporating each of your values into your weekly eating pattern. And give yourself grace—there is no such thing as a perfect diet anyway.
Here are some practical strategies for incorporating these values into your family practices:
Family Dinners: Pick one night per week, or per month, to get the whole family involved in the cooking process. Try out a gnocchi recipe, or make your own corn tortillas for taco night!
Health/Nutrition: Remember that 90% of good nutrition is simply creating a meal that contains all four major food groups:
- protein
- starch
- fruit
- vegetable
Try keeping grab-n-go options from each food group on hand, and mix and match them as you see fit.
Local/Sustainable Food Sourcing: It might be out of the way, but consider hitting up the Rochester Public Market, even if it’s only once a month. You may get hooked!
Affordability: See above recommendation for farmer’s markets, and kiss two birds with one smooch! The market offers plenty of ingredients to create healthy, cheap, easy meals.
Convenience: Takeout is an amazing option for convenience but know that you may need to supplement with additional food to create a complete meal. For example, next time you order sesame chicken, can you mix it with a bag of frozen broccoli from your freezer and pair it with an orange on the side?
Often, you are only one decision away from making your next meal slightly more meaningful, healthy, and delicious. Why not start today?
Supporting the Health of our Community
Interested in more customized nutrition education or nutrition counseling like this, either for your individual needs or for your family? The Center for Community Health & Prevention’s clinical team of registered dietitians, lifestyle counselors, a nurse practitioner and physicians can help with weight management, cutting back or quitting smoking/vaping, diabetes prevention and more!Author
