According to a survey, nearly a third of us eat dinner at a set time on weeknights - typically at 6 or 6.30pm. Photo / Getty Images
According to a survey, nearly a third of us eat dinner at a set time on weeknights - typically at 6 or 6.30pm. Photo / Getty Images
This was one of the most read stories on the NZ Herald website in 2023.
If you grew up in a household where dinner time around the table was a non-negotiable, chances are you’ve stuck to the habit as an adult. Or maybe your evening routine consists of collapsing on the couch with dinner on your lap before dozing off in front of your favourite reality TV show.
Whether you’re working full-time, fighting for fridge space in a flat, or hustling the kids from school to sports, dinner is often the last straw as our schedules get busier than ever.
But a new survey from My Food Bag has shown some of us still cling to the familiarity of a set dinner time routine. According to their findings, nearly a third of us eat dinner at a set time on weeknights - typically at 6 or 6.30pm.
Just 40 per cent of us sit down for dinner together on weeknights, with 55 per cent of us doing it two or three nights each week.
As for the couch/dining table divide? Half of us opt for the dinner table and 44 per cent of us choose comfort and eat dinner on the couch. Two-thirds of Kiwis surveyed said they plan meals ahead of time, while 55 per cent admit that having to think about what’s for dinner is the most stressful part of cooking.
For those of us who do stick to a routine, what is it about a set dinner time that we love?
My Food Bag’s Nadia Lim knows a thing or two about dinner - and she tells the Herald that there’s something “soothing and comforting” about planning a routine around it.
“After a busy day at work you don’t want to have to think anymore, do you? If you’ve been really busy and you’ve had to make lots of decisions and you’ve been rushing around, the last thing you want when you get home is not to know what’s going to happen - you want a nice, comforting, delicious meal. That’s what you deserve at the end of the day,” she says.
The alternative is an all-too-familiar scenario - get home, gaze despondently into your fridge, opt for takeaways and then spend the evening feeling guilty about your choices.
According to the survey, 60 per cent of us start our week off with the best of intentions to cook at home every night, before giving up and ordering fast food or heading out for dinner.
My Food Bag's Nadia Lim reveals why it's important to have a dinnertime routine.
Lim points out that a regular dinner routine was something many of us probably rediscovered a couple of years ago amid lockdown, simply because we didn’t have the option of going out.
“Everyone was like, oh, this is so nice eating at home with the family and doing more simple things - just the real basic things that we would have done all the time a couple of generations ago,” she recalls.
“My dad is Chinese Malaysian, and it’s really important in his culture for the family to always eat dinner together every night. When I was a kid, he was so strict about it that we weren’t even allowed to pick up our knife and fork before Mum had come and sat down, and we had to be there every night. It didn’t matter what was on, you had to be at dinner as a family together every night.”
Lim remembers feeling hard done by at the time, but now she’s “so glad that my dad instilled that in all of us kids”.
“It’s the one time of day where you can get together as a family, and just be connected over something that’s really positive - something that’s so nourishing.”
And while she’s not opposed to the occasional TV dinner or cheeky takeaway, she notes it’s important to be present and mindful of what you’re eating, whatever’s on your plate.
Though some of us like to religiously plan meals days in advance and always have the exact ingredients to hand, the MasterChef winner says she tends to plan only a few meals a week.
“For the others, I’m going to use up whatever is left over in the fridge and whatever I can scrounge around for in the garden, what’s in the freezer - or sometimes it might just be, like, beans on toast. Have two or three meals planned to give you a good head start, and then I think you can wing it a bit more on the other nights,” she suggests.
From there, it’s not rocket science: write down the meals you’re craving that week and the ingredients you’ll need for them, factoring in any takeaway nights or ready-made meals you have to hand to take the edge off.
If you’re not a keen cook, learning a few tips and tricks will save you time, money and stress at the supermarket. Lim adds that if you’re a parent, it’s important to include your kids in the meal prep - teaching them how to cook and grow some of their own food are skills that will last them a lifetime.
“It’s one of the most essential life skills you can have - it’s going to help with your mental health, your physical health, your budgeting skills,” she notes.
“I find that people that don’t know how to cook have got to have every single ingredient exactly the same as [in] the cookbook and it’s really expensive.
“Whereas if you’re a cook who has some good basics up your sleeve, you can go, ‘Okay, we’re going to have fried rice tonight, but we don’t have chicken - we’re going to use eggs instead. Or we don’t have beans, we’ve got some frozen peas.
