Dinner: How Many Things?

We usually have some kind of meat, a carb side dish, and O. or two vegetables, plus a salad. That way, everyone has something to eat even if they don't like everything!

Usually 3: meat, starch, veggie. Unless we have something that combines 2 groups like pizza and salad or soup and sandwich.

We do main dish, veggie, and carb. Sometimes we add a fruit or bread to it, but mostly it is the magic 3 so that we hit the basic food groups.

the recommended meal requirements for a child according to the association for child development is the following
breakfast
1 grain
1 milk
1 fruit or vegetable

lunch and supper are the same
1 grain
1 milk
2 fruit or vegetable
1 protein

2 snacks per day consisting of O. item from 2 of the following good groups
milk
grain
fruit / vegetable
protein

(2 items total ex: milk and apple slices or crackers and juice etc)

My mom still has 3-4 items... Now if my husband is cooking, it's about meat with him, and if anything else, then I have to prepare it... A lot of time when he grills, he'll do burgers, hot dogs, and chicken... My mom is always like why don't you save some of it... but usually most of it is gone same meal, and the left overs don't last long either...

Last night my husband smoked some chicken and by the time I got off work it was ready to eat. He ask me what was I preparing to go with it.. I said he cooked it, why didn't he prepare something on the side.. needless to say, we ate the chicken up and then we were still hungry... I had to make bacon and eggs 3 hrs later, no way was I going to do it right away...

3 as well...

For my kids it is always - meat, veggie, and a fruit. Usually 20 mins later they are ready for a snack and that is usually a dairy like yogurt, string cheese, or sometimes applesauce.

My kids rarely eat a starch like potatoes or noodles or something, but my husband and I do. We do meat, veggie, and starch and eat our fruit as snack.

yummy-what time? We generally have 4-a starch, a protein, a veggie and a salad. Don't forget dessert!

I just try to make sure there are veggies. I try for 1 or 2 different ones for variety and different colors since each color gives different vitamins etc. Sometimes we do not have any meat. We have had dinners with just beans and rice ( I throw in some chopped spinach with the beans). I also try no more than O. starch though my husband and kids might want potatoes and rice for dinner.

3 on a plate please. 3 is the magic number for me too. Our plate just looks off balance with less nad stuff touches too much with more!
Meat plus veg plus starch. Unless it's all 3 in the crock pot, then it's crock pot plus salad plus bread.
If I have my meat, veg, and starch, and am serving a salad also, it goes in a bowl on the side. wierd, right?

I usually do meat, O. veg, sometimes two and a carb, like a roll or something.

It depends. If we have stir fry it's technically O., because it's all mixed in. If we do curry, we usually have rice or noodles. If we have manacotti we might have bread and salad. We often have 2 veg and a main course...never really thought about it. We're not big dinner roll/bread people. Last night was sausage, mushrooms, green beans, and fruit.

3-4... Unless it's like a casserole type thing where several types are clumped together.

I try and have a fruit/veggie/starch (like bread, pasta or potatoes)/main dish.

Sometimes though, our dinner is just a yummy, fst/easy/cheap thing, like pico de gallo over rice and a sliced mango or tomato soup with crackers and cheese.

I usually have a few different things. I like to have lots of variety. I pick a meat, then either potatoes or a pasta, and then a veggie to have along with it, and then usually bread or muffins and sometimes a salad. It just depends, but i'd say that I always have about 3 or 4 things. I come from a big family and am used to cooking for at least 8-9 people so we make a lot of food.

We don't always have a starch. For us, it's usually a protein and lots of veggies. I guess 2 would be the normal number.

Depends on the meal - generally, a protein source, a non-starchy veg (or two, or three, or four), and a carb.

We usually have 4.

I try to have a protein, a starch, a veg and a fruit with dinner.

Sometimes its just olives or sliced tomato or sliced avocado or raw snap peas or mandarin oranges or sliced apples or mango, other times its a full fruit salad...I have found that it is better to have an assortment of 'snack' type fruits and veggies on the table with dinner, just in case O. or all of my kids doesn't happen to like the main meal. I have a 7 yr old son that thinks he wants to be a vegetarian, he has never liked meat or beans/lentils of any kind so I started giving him other options and it just stuck....now if I don't have them on the table they all rebel, even the teens :)

My mother always said a protein,a carb and 2 vegies, O. green and O. yellow or orange. Note potatoes count as a carb.

For me it is not really "how many items" but how many food types...

Every meal should have at LEAST 1 protein source, 1 vegetable or fruit source, and 1 carbohydrate source (and for us we also usually have 1 dairy too). I say "source" because "serving" is NOT what I mean.

If you are having a cheeseburger- the beef is a protein, the cheese is a dairy, lettuce, tomato, avocado is a vegetable, and the bun is a carb. If you have "small" cheeseburgers then fries could be an additional carb/protein source... if you are having "restaurant size" hamburgers, than it could be wise to skip the fries! If you load a lot of veggies on the burgers you don't have to have a salad (necessarily)- but if you don't, a small salad is a good idea.

Oh, and with every meal, and between every meal- water.

Pairing items wisely helps your body get the most out of foods! A carb is better absorbed paired with a protein, for example. Like spaghetti sauce, made from scratch is considered a "vegetable" noodles are a carb... naturally a lot of us would want to do bread sticks as a side... but really a salad with some Parmesan cheese sprinkled on can provide the "missing parts" of the meal better: a extra vegetable and a dairy. If you have a salad and the spaghetti with sauce- you really don't NEED anything else... it isn't bad if you have another option- but it is just "extra" really.

-M.

By the way.. with the exception of carbs that masquerade as vegetables (corn and potatoes) you can almost never have TOO many vegetables. If something seems to be "missing" from your plate... add a veggie!

I stick with a protein, starch and veggie. I worked in food service for many years so that may have influenced my thinking. I will often skip the "starch" myself when I'm trying to be careful about what I eat and I don't get all fired up if the kids don't want to eat rice or pasta or potato. There's not a whole lot of nutrition in the starches but they are good for filling the kids up.

I finally broke the pasta with bread habit (starch and starch) and generally don't serve pasta as an entree but as a side dish. I also don't serve corn or potatoes as veggies, those are starches to me and I serve another veggie when I have those.

For Dinner usually 3 items: Veggie of some kind, bread/potato/pasta, and then a meat. Some times the 4th item is a fruit if we did not have it for lunch or snack.

Hi denise!

I often give a cup of home made soup as a starter...(pea soup, chicken veggie etc)...and then the traditional 'trinity'...protein, veggie and a starch. I try to have some bread on hand as well (got to love that bread machine) . I do not generally 'do' dessert (sp?? Looks funny?)...But...we have enough B days thru the year, and cakes etc are always special treats...

Generally the only meals with MORE than the trinity are large gatherings...and with MY large crew...those are typically 'buffet' style...and MUCH more variety there.

Hope this helps!
Michele/cat

We have 2- usually a meat and a veggie, sometimes a meat and fruit and veggie. Most of our other food groups are eaten through out the rest of the day at different meals.

usually two or three depending- tonight we are having Beef Roast, potatoes and carrots, salad.

Add me to the 3's.
My husband some times makes fun of me because my rule of 3 (O. protein, O. vegetable and O. starch) because I consider corn and potatoes as the carbs, so when he puts diner together and he put rice and corn is a no-no for me and he laughs because for him corn and potatoes are vegetables (which they are but in my carbs list, lol).
EDIT: I forgot, sometimes we do have 4, if desert counts as the 4th.

We do the protein, starch, veg thing too. If it's a pasta, I'll add (or sneak?) extra veggies in it (chicken fettucini alfredo has tomatoes, spinach, and fresh mushrooms, or lately I've been slipping green peppers, mushrooms, yellow squash, maybe some zucchini into our spaghetti with meatballs) and then we count the pasta as our starch and don't do garlic bread unless we're having guests, but also a salad.
So yeah, a normal boring dinner for us is 3 things. 4 if we're having guests or a special dinner though. (The 4th is generally a different colored vegetable than the first). Casseroles are our exception to the rule, but those are loaded with vegetables.