One of the things we love most about The MN Table is that it removes the burden of meal thought and preparation from your busy lives and allows you to walk in the door after a hectic day at work and within minutes, enjoy a delicious meal!

Providing a solution and offering a convenience are just a couple of the inspirations for what we do everyday! However a recent article that I read about the benefits of families having a sit down dinner, together, on a regular basis was even more profound than I originally researched when I started The MN Table. As technology has continued to evolve even since my original research, so too have the impacts of constantly being ‘connected’. Days are spent on phones, answering emails, texts and maybe every once in a great while at work sneaking in an update on Facebook. For children it’s obvious, they don’t know anything different than having a phone in their hand all day everyday.

So what does this all mean for dinner time? For most families, it’s routine to not plan a meal until the morning of, or even after noon! In fact it’s not at all uncommon to not plan a meal at all until you walk into the kitchen, exhausted from a long day at work. Three out of four people don’t know what they are having for dinner at 4:00. Here are just a few of the statistics that article I recently read:Kids and teens who share family dinners three or more times per week:Perform better academicallyAre less likely to be overweightAre more likely to eat healthy foodsAre less likely to engage in risky behaviors e.g. drugs, alcohol And best of all for parents who feel like their children have a better relationship with their iPhone than anyone in the house, kids who sit down for a family dinner three or more times per week have better relationships with their parents!

For parents, the good news doesn’t end there, research also showed that nearly a quarter of all teens actually wanted more family dinners! There are also numerous nutritional benefits that we will discuss in future articles but for now, we hope you will agree that when it comes to sit down meals the benefits are obvious! Thank you for reading and please feel free to click here for our new menu this week as well as our best sellers from our a la carte and marketplace!