By: Maria McConville
Making healthy family meals is tough in our fast-paced society. Many families struggle with nutritious eating, but dual-military families face additional challenges. Military Service Members in 3 dual-military couples discuss their experiences sharing healthy meals with their partners.
As a dual-military family, what is your greatest challenge to good family nutrition?
TL: My husband and I came into our relationship with a relatively good foundation of what good nutrition looks like. Even after 10 years of marriage, it still feels cumbersome. We eat the same nutritious meals repeatedly. It gets old and uninspiring. We are fortunate to have my mom live with us. She is an integral part of our child care and meal preparation. However, our ideas of healthy eating don’t jive with her ideas. We greatly appreciate the support and stability Mom provides, but we haven’t found a good way to approach her about the changes we want to make toward healthier eating.
JF: Time is our number one challenge in terms of healthy eating. My wife and I work long hours at our Pentagon jobs, and our 2 little ones are in childcare. Our dinners are usually a rushed and hectic event. Meals need to be prepared ahead of time or need to be made quickly. Cooking a full meal from scratch is a difficult task most nights if we plan to get the kids bathed and in bed at a reasonable hour.
JN: My husband and I are in the Army, working long and odd hours. We try to share the cooking, but often we are too tired to cook. The truth is we hate the cleanup. We rarely eat breakfast and lunch at home. We default to grab-and-go meals. These meals are quick and convenient, but not nutritious.
What tips, tools, or hacks have you put in place to strive for good nutrition and healthy meals?
TL: In the past, we put meals together on Sundays for the upcoming week. It worked for a while. Then with our son’s sports schedule and the increasing demands of our jobs, the weekends became an extension of the week. Our best success is when we make meals that last several days. We make leftovers on purpose! At times, we invest in prepared meals from different home-delivery companies. This does help, but we still need to grocery shop for the other meals and snacks.
JF: Our best tools in healthier eating are pre-made salads, eating leftovers, and meal prepping. During the week, my wife and I eat large salads with chicken, tuna, or other protein sources. Adding avocados, almonds, and veggies to the salads makes a quick, healthy, and filling dinner—this is the staple of our work-week dinners. For the children, we usually cook a large meal on Sunday—like chili or soup—feeding them until mid-week. We love the convenience of the crockpot.
JN: My husband is the master of his new smoker. On the weekends, he will smoke a variety of foods—some whole chickens and a brisket—which we shred and use for burrito bowls, sandwiches, salads, and tacos. I love the Instapot. I can load food into it if I get home at a decent hour. The food cooks while I’m changing and attending to the dog.
What healthy eating improvements would you still like to make?
TL: Getting out of our rut and trying new healthy menus. We need to be more creative and diverse. We also need to clean up our unhealthy snacking. That probably needs to be my new goal.
JF: We struggle with weekend meal prep and having the right foods on hand. We need to plan ahead with our grocery purchases.
JN: One word: consistency.
The bottom line
Meal planning, being consisent with healthy purchases, and budgeting time seem to be common threads in healthy family meals. Practicing some of these strategies can help military members and their families optimize performance and health.
For more tips from HPRC, check out these resources:
To learn more about healthy eating or to ask an HPRC expert about other nutrition questions, visit hprc-online.org.
About the Author
Maria McConville, of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, is a Senior Nutrition Health Educator for the Consortium for Health and Military Performance (CHAMP) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU).
