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Have you seen your family lately?

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of Family Day – a Day to Eat Dinner With Your Children. This “holiday” (or movement, perhaps?) was created by CASA, The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, because its studies show that the more often children eat with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink, or use drugs. Family dinners also have a direct impact on positive self-image, higher grades and parent-child communication. So CASA created a holiday to encourage people to eat family dinners.  Did you celebrate it by sitting down to dinner with your family?

It makes me sad that we need a holiday for this. Sad that we need need an annual reminder to sit down at the table together and share a meal and talk about our day. But since we apparently do need that reminder, I’m grateful that CASA has stepped up to provide it and that other companies who believe in the power of a family dinner have joined them to sponsor and publicize it.

As one example, Stouffer’s has partnered with Todd Parr, a children’s author who has penned a new book called “Let’s Fix Dinner”  in celebration of this day. It’s available for a limited time through the link I included here. (I just ordered mine!) Incidentally, Todd Parr also wrote “This is My Hair,” one of my daughter’s most favorite books when she was a toddler…love love love that silly book.)

I am a big believer in the importance of family dinners. My own family sat down to a meal together every night growing up, as did my husband’s family. Our growing family eats together every night now unless my husband is traveling for work. Sometimes that means we eat early or late to accommodate our schedules…but we do it.  We all look forward to that symbolic point in our day when we come together from our disparate activities – work, preschool, tumbling, kindergarten, errands, exercise, whatever – and reconnect in one place, at one time, around one table as a family.  I’m frankly a little anxious about how our ritual may need to adjust as our children grow older and begin to participate in activities that cut into the family dinner hour. My hope is that we’ll be so attached to this family tradition that we’ll do whatever we can to preserve it, as often as we possibly can.
Since I love to cook, these family dinners provide an opportunity to put home-cooked food on the table, but the data from CASA suggests that it’s not so much the food that matters. It’s the ritual. The connection. The conversation that unfolds. So please don’t pressure yourself to prepare a homemade feast if you can’t see your way there. Simply put food on the table and eat. Pick up takeout if that’s what works. Just eat. Together. You’ll be glad you did.
If you’re already having family meals, will you write a comment below this post and share why they’re important to you or how you make them fit into your schedule? And if you’re not having them as often as you’d like, can you try to have one family meal a week and let that be your ritual? It could be Sunday breakfast or Friday dinner or whatever works for your family. Just do what you can; you’ll create an opportunity for your children to open up and share about their day and for you to make memories you’ll always cherish. If the toddler runs laps around the table while everyone eats, so be it. If your teenager doesn’t talk at all, so be it. Do it anyhow. Routinely. And let the ritual do its work.

Perhaps if we all commit to eating as families as often as we can, we won’t need an annual holiday to remind us of why these dinners matter. We’ll be celebrating them all year.

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Healthy or Not? It’s not black and white…

My daughter likes to play a game she calls “Is it healthy or not?” She’s 5, so everything I do is still cool to her and apparently I spend quite a lot of time talking about this subject so it’s very very cool. The game goes something like this.


“Okay Mom – let’s play ‘Is it healthy?’  I’ll name a food and you tell me if it is healthy or not!”

You might think I’d be pretty darn good at this game. But I promise you that it is more difficult than it sounds! More often than not, my answer to her seemingly simple question is “It depends.”

Cereal? 
It depends.

Macaroni and cheese?
Depends.

French fries? Chicken? Milk?
Depends. Depends. Depends! 

Apples?
Healthy! Yes! Praise God – apples are unequivocally healthy! Whew..

Aaaaargh! I wish I could give her more straightforward answers, but I simply can’t because so much of the answer depends on the method of preparation used.

For example, a high-fiber, low-sugar, whole-grain breakfast cereal is pretty healthy! It may have a few too many additives, but I’d give it a passing grade. But Fruit Loops? Cocoa Puffs? Even Rice Krispies? Not so much.

Mac and cheese. If it’s made from scratch with a whole wheat pasta, skim milk, and a sensible amount of real cheddar it’s actually a pretty healthy food. But the kind in the box with white pasta and cheese flavored powder, maybe not so healthy.

We make homemade baked fries that are very healthy, and Ore-Ida even has a variety or two that would earn the “healthy” moniker…but any fast food or restaurant fries certainly would not.

Chicken can be grilled or baked or sauteed into a lean healthful entree. But if we’re talking about a chicken nugget, I just can’t call it healthy.

Even milk has been compromised. Organic, skim milk may well be part of a healthful diet. But sugar-laden chocolate or strawberry milk (organic or not – have you read the label on Horizon flavored milk boxes?!) just isn’t.


It’s no wonder that kids, and many adults, are confused about what exactly is healthy these days. As a way to simplify, I’m partial to Michael Pollan’s Food Rules approach. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Brilliant. In his book, he breaks down each of those principles into really simple guidelines. Things like “Avoid food products that contain ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce,” or “It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car”.

The bottom line is that in today’s food environment, we need to be savvy food consumers who read labels in stores and ask servers in resataurants to get information about the nutritional profile of our food so that we can make good choices. 


All manufactured food is required to carry these labels, so it’s important to learn to read them! And restaurants are increasingly publishing nutrition information for their menus to help patrons make informed choices. If the nutrition info is not posted in the store, it’s often available upon request or online. 

McDonald’s, for example, has quite an elaborate system online in which you can “Bag a McMeal” and calculate its nutritional profile, making any customizations you’d like. And if you forgot to investigate in advance, the nutrition info for their menu is also printed on the backside of the paper tray liner. (Really! Check if you don’t believe me.) 


Earlier this year an Oregon-based chain, called Burgerville, began printing the nutrition profile of the ordered meal on their receipts….and making suggestions for how to order more healthfully! Here’s an article explaining that choice – I’ve never heard of anything else quite like it!

So while restaurants are making strides to assist us, and food manufacturers are putting info right in front of us, it’s ultimately up to us to take a moment to read the label before making an informed choice. Because in most cases, it’s just not black and white.

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Does your life have enough “white space”?

From time to time (and with his permission!) I’ll be re-posting some things written by Leo Babauta on his ZenHabits blog. Leo has an interesting and admirable philosophy of un-copywriting his content, preferring that others help to spread the word. I find that a number of his posts reinforce the principles I teach at Nourish and  I hope they will inspire you on your path to well-being. This one beautifully illustrates the “Rest” principle.


Create space.
Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on twitter .
I’m not a designer, but I’ve always been in love with the design concept of white space.
It’s the space in a design that isn’t filled with things — as you can tell from the design of Zen Habits and my other blog, mnmlist, it’s something I use (perhaps too) liberally.
But white space can be used in the design of our lives as well, not just the design of magazines and websites and ads. By using white space in our lives, we create space, balance, emphasis on what’s important, and a feeling of peace that we cannot achieve with a more cramped life. Let’s look briefly at how to do this.

 The principles of white space

Some of the things white space accomplishes in design:
  • greater legibility
  • feeling of luxury
  • breathing room & balance
  • more emphasis
These same concepts can translate to our lives:
  • Clarity. Instead of legibility, white space can give clarity to the things in our lives — whether they’re possessions, projects, tasks, or just things that occupy our time and attention. A nice piece of furniture is more beautiful when it’s not surrounded by clutter. A well-prepared piece of food is more tasty when it’s not smothered in sauces and piled with fries and cheese. A presentation is more effective when we don’t use Powerpoint and have only a few points to make.
  • Peace. When our lives are cramped, and our homes and workspaces are cluttered, we feel stressed. When we have fewer things on our schedule and fewer things around us, we feel peaceful.
  • Breathing room & balance. Many people talk about finding “work-life balance”, but this is very hard to do if you have no white space. Leave space between things to find the breathing room you need, and to easier achieve balance.
  • Emphasis on the important. When our days are non-stop busy, everything is important and nothing is important. But put white space between things, and those things acquire more weight, and we place more importance on each individual thing.

Achieving white space

In theory, achieving white space isn’t difficult: you remove non-essential items from your life, your workday, your surroundings, your possessions, and leave the essential items with space around them.
But of course in practice it’s a bit different, and requires experimentation, learning, practice. I’d suggest starting small, with one area of your life, and making small bits of white space. Start by identifying what’s important, and the slowly removing the non-essential things to create the white space.
Some ideas:
  • Breathe. Simply take a couple minutes between tasks, meetings, anything that you do, to breathe. After a meeting, for example, return to your desk and just sit still for a couple minutes, focusing on your breath going in and out. When you get home, pause and breathe. When you’re done with a task on the computer, close everything and breathe, before starting on the next task. This creates space between tasks and allows you to focus on each one.
  • Schedule. Don’t overschedule. Leave space on your schedule, between tasks, instead of putting things back-to-back. The space gives you time to go between tasks, to recover, to refocus, to breathe.
  • Projects. Do fewer projects at a time. Instead of juggling a bunch of projects at once, try to do one for as long as you can before switching to the next (sometimes you need to switch because you’re waiting on information or on someone else to do something). If you can, take a short break between each project — as long as you can afford.
  • Sit. Start your day with the white space of just sitting still for 10 minutes. It can be a meditation session, or simply sitting still with a cup of coffee or tea. If you like this, try putting it in the middle and end of your day as well.
  • Remove clutter. Pick a few important things on your desk, or in your home, and remove the rest. This will give you visual space and create a more peaceful atmosphere.
  • Savor. Slow down and savor everything you eat, everything you do. Breathe before you take each bite, and enjoy each bite.
You can read more about simplicity in Leo’s books, The Zen Habits Handbook for Life & The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life. More here.
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