
The current pace of life, the rush, stress and impossible schedules mean that many times we do not dedicate the necessary time and care at lunchtime. That’s why sometimes we eat fast and eat badly. We heat what we have at hand without worrying about eating a varied and healthy diet. This tendency to eat anything increases when we eat alone and are not aware of others.
Eating as a family
We know that it is not always possible to eat as a family. Whether because of the incompatibility of schedules or because we live alone, sometimes we find it impossible to meet with our own at lunchtime. However, the benefits of eating as a family are numerous, especially in the case of children and adolescents.
In addition to promoting the feeling of unity and belonging to a group, in this case the family, eating as a family makes children less prone to obesity by eating more varied and healthier, and by considerably reducing the intake of pastries and soft drinks. Several studies show that eating as a family increases the consumption of fruits, vegetables, fiber, calcium and vitamins, so young people grow healthier.
There is also a greater care when programming balanced and varied menus when eating as a family than when eating alone. But when we talk about eating as a family we are referring to the daily meals that occur within the family nucleus, because special events where many people gather are usually copious meals not especially healthy.
Eating alone
On the contrary, if we do not have to worry about preparing a family menu, the tendency is to consume food more for our desires than for our needs. It is also very common to be lazy when cooking when we are alone, but we just have to propose to be a little more constant when it comes to changing our eating habits.
So, everything is a matter of planning, and if we are aware of the importance of a healthy and balanced diet to improve our quality of life, we can make our daily menus alone much healthier.
The ideal is to program a varied menu in which vegetables, fruit and fish abound, without forgetting legumes and providing our body with the vitamins and minerals it needs. We can dedicate a day of the weekend to cook for the whole week and arrange it in individual containers in the refrigerator or freezer according to the needs of the food. In this way, we will have at hand, the daily food and we will not have to make the decision of what to cook when we arrive from work.
On the other hand, for an adult it can be an advantage to eat alone, if it is well programmed, because it can be better organized, without being aware of other members of his family, nor of his needs, nor of his tastes.