Celebrate Family Meals Month by Making Meatless Monday a Family Affair

Getting your whole family to join you for Meatless Monday is wonderful, but sometimes kids may not be eager to try new fruits and vegetables or experiment with new foods. However, if they are involved in cooking, research shows that kids are more likely to try foods.

The Kids Cook Monday, another Monday Campaigns initiative, encourages families to set aside Monday nights for cooking and eating together as a family. The Kids Cook Monday website provides family-friendly recipes, perfect for Meatless Monday, as well as a free downloadable e-cookbook, The Family Dinner Date Cookbook. Each recipe features a fun format that divides cooking tasks into those kids can do by themselves, those they can do together with an adult, and tasks adults should handle.

When kids pitch in making meals, they’re proud of their accomplishment and excited to eat the food they’ve helped to make.  Cooking together also provides a natural time for discussing the impact that food choices have on our bodies and the environment.  The more educated kids are about food, the more open they’ll be to healthy, sustainable food choices.

There’s no better time to make Meatless Monday a family activity than September, which is Family Meals Month. Family Meals Month is a nationwide event aimed at supporting families in enjoying more meals together.

The best part is the time you’ll be spending together preparing the meals. The time you share chatting as you cook together becomes even more important as they reach adolescence and move into those tricky teenage years.

The family that cooks together, eats together.

Families eating together leads to positive things. Research from Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse suggests that kids who eat family dinners get better grades in school, develop better communication skills, and are less likely to try drugs.  In addition, the American Academy of Pediatrics found that kids who ate dinner with their family regularly were less likely to be obese.

Meatless Monday can improve personal health and the health of the planet.  Sharing it with your kids by cooking and eating together may also help improve the health of your family.

Learn more about how to cook with your family in the upcoming Kids Cook Monday Twitter chat for Family Meals Month on September 9 from 2-3 PM EST. Follow @KidsCookMonday and #KidsCookFamilyMeals on Twitter to join in!

Learn more at KidsCookMonday.org. If you cook a meatless meal with your family, we’d love to see us. Tag us @MeatlessMonday and @KidsCookMonday on social media.