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| The importance of family style eating
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Bring back proper meal times & passing the plate
Family style eating and proper mealtimes are becoming less and less of a daily occurrence in busy homes, and it could well be affecting our kids in many ways. From manners, to socializing and building relationships/connecting with other family members to eating habits and relationships with food, the family mealtime, self-serving and passing food around the table is hugely important.
In fact research recently published goes as far as to say that family style eating, particularly passing bowls around and allowing children to serve themselves may even help prevent childhood obesity according to a study by the University of Illinois.
Eating together as a family is not only important at home but has also been found to be beneficial in child care too.
Passing the plate helps develop portion awareness
The University of Illinois study looked at the feeding practices of two to five-year-old children in 118 child care centres.
Researchers showed that when children and child care workers sit around a table together at mealtimes, passing bowls and serving themselves, children learn to recognise when they are full better than they do when food is pre-plated for them.
"Family-style meals give kids a chance to learn about things like portion size and food preferences. When foods are pre-plated, children never develop the ability to read their body's hunger cues. They don't learn to say, okay, this is an appropriate portion size for me", said lead author and director of the University of Illinois Child Development Laboratory Brent McBride.
According to Mr. McBride one in four preschool children (in the USA) is overweight or obese, and more than 12 million preschoolers consume up to five meals or snacks daily in American child care centers. A University of Sydney study reported that one in five preschool children were obese.
To combat the problem of child obesity in 2011 US Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics issued a number of guidelines to help early childhood education and care providers. The University of Illinois research is the first to look at how well care providers are doing against the Academy's guidelines.
The Academy recommends that providers eat with children so they can model healthy behaviour and says that teachers should not pressure children to eat more than they want. This is of course just as important in the home with parents and children.
University of Illinois Nutritional Sciences graduate Dipti A. Dev said that providers need to help children recognise their feelings of hunger and fullness:
"Instead of asking: "Are you done?", teachers (and parents) should ask children: "Are you full?" Or they should say, "If you're hungry, you can have some more". Asking the right questions can help children listen to their hunger and satiety signals", she said.
Ms. Dev also said that if children don't want to eat, providers shouldn't urge them to eat out of concern the kids may get hungry before the next meal or snack is served.
"If a child doesn't eat at one meal, she or he will compensate for it over a 24-hour period. Making kids eat when they're not hungry is probably the worst thing you can do. It teaches them not to pay attention to their body's signals", she said.
Sitting down all together helps with fussy eaters
You may have noticed as parents that children in child care seem to eat so much better in care than they do at home! This must have a lot to do with the simple environment of sitting down to eat with everyone else, doing what everyone else does and just following their lead.
Also at lunch or snack time at child care, the focus is purely on the meal, not on TV in the background, or parents getting up and down and doing other things, if they are sitting with the kids at all. We as busy parents are all guilty of doing that from time to time. It's very easy to just leave the kids to it, while you get some chores done, but in that way they have no guidance on how and what to eat, no real impetus to eat properly and behave and little interest in their meal itself.
Sitting down all together also also encourages children to try vegetables and other foods. When they're in child care sitting round a big table with their friends all around them, it's much more likely that they'll give something a go that the child opposite or next door to them is happily eating.
Eating proper meals, in a leisurely and sociable manner is just as important for adults and their eating habits, digestion and weight control too, so let's all give it a go for 2014 and bring back proper family style eating.
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