I imagine that when the McDonald brothers first envisioned their burger place they did not see it as replacing family meals around the dinner table. As with any great idea, they wanted to serve a need. But also as with many great ideas sometimes there are unforeseen consequences. So much of our society has now been McDonaldized. We want it and we want it NOW!!!
When I was a little girl a trip to McDonald's was special. We didn't go weekly or even monthly. It was a rare treat. Today I'd hazard a guess to say that one more more of our meals has been replaced with fast food weekly if not daily for far to many of us. The consequences of this are readily apparent. We are suffering from completely preventable diseases. The solutions are simple and easy for us to apply. Hopefully all we really need is a gentle reminder that fast food should not be a part of our regular diet. The more we incorporate fast food into our lives the more we teach our children that fast food is the way to live and this just isn't true so here are three tips to use to avoid the fast food trap and to show our children a better example.
1. Avoid the void by bagging it up. As busy working parents we often find ourselves picking up our children after school or after sporting events and remembering Oh no! I didn't take anything out for dinner! We begin to think through our refrigerator inventory and ask ourselves if we have left overs or something easy to prepare for dinner. If we don't then our mind says No worries. Pick up a pizza. The problem here is that there was a void and fast food volunteered to fill it. Try this instead. Buy some crock pot bags. These are the bags that you put into your crock pot to avoid having to clean up a nasty mess. Fill the bags with some of your favorites like root veggies and chicken or a pork roast (actually the combinations are endless!). Store these in the freezer inside the crock pot bag and in the morning before work put the entire bag into the crock pot and boom! Void avoided! Dinner is ready when you get home!
2. Avoid the snack attack. When my daughter was in elementary school each day when I would pick her up from school she would begin the dramatic begging for snacks and tell me things like her stomach was touching her spine etc. I learned to dodge the fast food temptation by packing snacks for her like peanut butter and celery, fruit and juice. Today as a teenager, she packs her own snacks before she goes anywhere. That is amazing. I only hope that these small habits will prove beneficial to her over the course of her life.
3. Make it special. Here's the thing. It's okay to eat out once in a while. The lesson here is not to ever eat out. The lesson is to teach our children that eating out is a planned family time together. It's not what we do because we forgot to cook or because we are too busy. We are never too busy to protect our children's health! Eating out should be a planned time where you make sure that you've budgeted enough to eat out and to tip properly! Our daily structured routine should be to spend time with each other and to eat at our own dinner tables together. Clean the bills and papers off your dinner table and serve up food at home. Make your own home made pizzas and tacos because it's fun and it's time with your children well spent. Save the fast food opportunities for a once a month or so outing with the family.
Let's teach our children well.
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