Rally ’round the Dinner Table
The Billion Family Dinners Challenge: Take the challenge to help America track 1 billion family dinners and create a more loving and healthy society!
Sometimes, thinking of a family dinner around the table can evoke feelings of “days gone by”—an ideal that isn’t attainable in today’s fast-paced, media-addicted world. But those in the Midwest, America’s heartland, aren’t ready to give up that tradition just yet. In fact, a team of entrepreneurs in Indianapolis believes so strongly in the benefits of shared dinners that they’re looking to bring them back into the spotlight through a national advocacy campaign—The Billion Family Dinners Challenge—via their mobile application, DinnerCall.
“The important thing to remember,” Gerry Hays, DinnerCall’s CEO says, “is that family dinners are rarely perfect, but they’re always worth it.”
The team says that dinnertime may prove to be the most influential 30 minutes of the day for families (and society overall). However, the team is careful to note they’re not just sticking to the traditional definition of the Normal Rockwell family.
“DinnerCall defines a family dinner as two or more people, sharing the same meal, without the distraction of technology. So even if your immediate family isn’t around, sharing a meal with your neighbor, some friends, a teammate, a few coworkers or even a stranger counts as a family dinner. We’re all part of a global family, and it’s important to cultivate those relationships just as much as with our immediate families.”
What makes dinnertime so crucial to our society’s health? According to Hays, People who regularly eat together enjoy significant benefits including lower obesity levels, lower substance abuse rates, more positive relationships and happier more secure children. What’s more, because people gain nourishment from both food and personal connectivity, they ultimately experience more joy and fulfillment in their lives.
Hays has seen the impact regular family dinners can have in his own home.
“By being more present in the moment and really connecting with everyone else around the table, I am closer to my three kids than I ever have been before.”
Given these clear benefits, imagine if every person spent more time being present at dinner and sharing a meal with others! Together, we could change the trajectory of love and compassion in our society.
“It’s been shown that just one more dinner together per week can breed these positive benefits,” co-founder and President Ashton Chaffee adds, “and that’s really what we’re trying to promote by rallying America to log dinners towards the Billion Family Dinners Challenge on DinnerCall. Whether you’re a dinner pro and get your family together for dinner regularly, or whether you’re just getting back into the swing of it, your participation in the Billion Family Dinners Challenge matters. Not only does it breed positive change for your family, but it helps encourage others to start building those same habits. Plus, if each household tracks just 10 dinners through DinnerCall, we’ll have collectively tracked 1 billion dinners in efforts to positively impact society!”
The app not only keeps dinnertime statistics—such as your total time spent around the table, average dinner length and how many people are eating at the same time as you on a national scale—it also allows you to store and share family dinner photos, provides conversation starters for the table and enables the sharing of key family milestones.
If you’d like to see your family—and our society—change for the better, participating in the Billion Family Dinners Challenge is easy:
Visit BillionDinners.com
Download the mobile tracking application.
Grab family, friends or neighbors and begin tracking your dinners.
