The challenge: Eat and enjoy food with others this week.
The Eat together challenge is intended to highlight the importance of undertaking activities together. During and after lockdown, social distancing rules will need to be applied depending on personal and local circumstances.
Why enjoy food together?
Spending time with family and friends can help develop self-esteem and social skills, allowing everyone to talk about what is important to them. Eating occasions can be a great opportunity to spend time together.
When we are trying to eat healthily, enjoying food together can help with motivation. Spending time with others can also be beneficial for mental health and can be a great opportunity to have fun with friends or family and try new dishes.
Enjoying preparing and cooking food together
Enjoying food does not mean just eating. Everyone can help plan, shop, prepare and cook the food. This is not only great socially, but can help us learn and develop new food skills for life!
Get family and friends involved in suggesting ideas – they may have a recipe they would like to share, cook or teach to someone else. Whatever the reason, cooking together has many great benefits!
Try to avoid mealtimes in front of the TV as this can draw attention away from others around you. Distractions can also delay hunger cues so may encourage us to eat more than we need.
Support for you
To help plan and promote the Eat together challenge
- Eat together challenge guide – a downloadable guide about the challenge.
- Eat together logo - you can download the logo to promote the challenge. For example, you might want to include it on your canteen menu and staff/student emails. The logo is also available in Welsh.
- Eat together poster – display this colourful poster to remind everyone that your organisation is taking on this challenge!
Activity ideas, information and resources
Whether you are in your workplace or working or studying from home, there are lots of ways you can get your colleagues/peers involved in the Eat together challenge.
Watch the video below for some inspiration! Why not share it with colleagues?
Try these ideas for teams/peers working or studying at home (or in the office!)
- Lovely lunch! Plan a ‘virtual’ team lunch! Set a theme and ask colleagues to bring an appropriate lunch, this could be a good chance to reinforce Monday’s Eat more wholegrains challenge and Tuesday's Vary your veg challenge too!
- What will you do? Email the team and ask them to share their thoughts for how they can ‘Eat and enjoy food with others this week’. Share the ideas!
- Show and tell. Encourage everyone to share an ‘eating together’ occasion from the past few weeks. What made it special? It might be about picking ingredients, cooking together or sharing a family dinner!
- Hand me down. Get everyone to share a family favourite recipe – it might have been ‘handed down’ though the family, or just something that everyone enjoys together. You could even create a recipe montage!
- Make a promise. Get the team to make a promise to share a recipe or food skills with someone else to share the love of food and eating together. Food helps to bring us together and we can learn so much from others.
- Around the world in 80 recipes. Challenge everyone to get creative and share recipes from around the world – and hopefully eat together! They might be from different traditions, celebrations and religions, or somewhere that they’ve been on holiday! You could use a world map to plot the recipes.
Use and share this information to help everyone learn more about healthy eating and cooking to help them eat and enjoy food with others this week!
- Healthy, balanced diet webpage – learn about what makes up a healthy, balanced diet and use this information to plan your meals.
- Healthy lunches information – get some ideas and tips on how to make your lunch healthier.
- Healthy eating for toddlers – use these top tips to prepare healthy meals for toddlers.
- Healthier takeaways – make healthier choices when choosing a takeaway.
- Snacks and healthier snacking while at home – looking for healthier snack options when working from home? Learn more about healthier snacking by reading through this information.
- Food labels – learn how to make healthier choices by looking at food labels by reading through this information before you go shopping.
- The Eatwell Guide information page – learn more about the UK’s healthy eating guide.
- Healthy eating on a budget – check out these top tips on healthy eating on a budget. Take a look before you go shopping, and plan your meals!
- QC on a budget - use these budgeting tips and swaps to make healthy meals at a lower cost.
- Get portion wise – Learn more about the importance of portion sizes and take a look at our portion size lists, perfect to help adults plan their meals.
- Guide to portion sizes for 1-4 year-olds – if you have toddlers at home, find out about portion sizes for them.
- Weekly meal plan – plan your meals and stick it up in your kitchen!
- Keeping well at home online course – encourage colleagues and peers to go that extra mile and complete this free online course which includes tips and ideas of how to keep well if you're staying at home more since the coronavirus pandemic.
- Breakfast for those we love – show how much you appreciate someone you love with our breakfast recipes that all of the family can help with.
- Made with love, shared with love recipes – get cooking with your family and share food with family and friends.
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Eat together Challenge Webinar Watch our short webinar taking a closer look at the Eat together challenge and why eating with others may be important - why not share with your colleagues and encourage them to watch too? |
Nurseries and schools
Eat together challenge information and resources for nurseries and schools is available on the Food – a fact of life website.
