I recently came across an article from Time magazine called The Magic of the Family Meal.

It highlights some pretty amazing benefits to eating together as a family:

Studies show that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words and know which fork to use.

Pretty amazing results for such a simple activity! Even though the act of eating as a family sounds simplistic, for some reason, the majority of families don't practice this important ritual daily. Perhaps the ideal of a family meal every day sounds unattainable. It does take organization and foresight to actually make family dinners happen. But family meal planning doesn't have to be overwhelming! DinnerBeat not only provides the framework to make family meal planning a breeze, it also provides meal ideas, a way to dialog with friends about their meals, an automatically-generated shopping list, and will even schedule your main dishes for you.

My family and I are committed to eating family meals together every day. I'm sure there will be more struggles as my 2 1/2-year-old and 9-month-old grow, but at least now that I have DinnerBeat, I am no longer overwhelmed by the thought of family meal planning.

Labels: Family Meal Planning