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“If you are encountering families with feeding concerns, I strongly encourage you to ask them if sitting down together for meals is part of their regular routine. The more prescriptive ‘eat this, not that’ or calorie counting model that has been traditionally used in medicine is clearly not working well. As we see continue to see increased obesity and disordered eating alongside decreased resilience in our children, a return to the daily ‘ritual’ of the family meal may be the most beneficial first step for some of our struggling families. Encourage them to start small if necessary. If they are currently not eating together set the goal of one meal per week. If they are already doing it, suggest that they do so with more verve and intention. Educate yourself on the overwhelming benefits of the family meal for children and parents alike. Practice it in your own home so that you too may know the magic of this simple act. Family meals are a small change that is accessible and manageable for just about anyone— and maybe just what the doctor ordered.”
Kristin Saxena is a pediatrician.
She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “The surprising power of family meals.”
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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.
Transcript
Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show we have Kristin Saxena. She is a pediatrician and podcaster. She wrote the KevinMD article “The surprising power of family meals.” Kristin, welcome to the show.
Kristin Saxena: Thanks, Kevin. I’m happy to be here.
Kevin Pho: We’ll get into the article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and journey to where you are today?
Kristin Saxena: Yeah, you bet. Well, it’s a little convoluted. Like you said, I’m a pediatrician by training, and I worked several years as a clinic pediatrician, mostly in the outpatient setting. As life takes you in many different directions, my husband, who’s actually a physician as well, ended up starting a med spa that sort of just turned into a laser hair removal practice. As that grew, in 2017 he recruited me out of my pediatrics job to run the medical division of the laser hair removal company, and I worked there as the chief medical officer from 2017 until the summer of 2020.
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At that time, I was loving that job. I learned a ton, but I wanted to kind of get back to kids’ issues, or kind of my original passion in life. So I decided to step away from that position and look into what I could do more for my community. Once you’ve been in sort of a scaling business like that, I think I just sort of had this mindset, like, how can I reach more people than I was just reaching in my clinic?
So I started a charitable foundation where we focus mostly on kids’ health and wellness issues in our community, and then I also started a podcast that is called “Feeding the Family with Dr. Kristin.” Kids and kids’ nutrition has always been sort of one of my main focuses in life, and so I wanted to be able to reach kind of a larger audience through that platform.
Kevin Pho: One of the themes I have on my site and on this podcast is that physicians are more than our MDs, and I’m always interested in hearing how physicians are using their degrees outside of what they traditionally train for. Now, for those doctors who are interested in practicing outside of a traditional clinical practice and doing some of the things that you did, talk us through some of the decision points you made before coming to that decision.
Kristin Saxena: Absolutely. Well, I think it is so hard, because at least for me, I was kind of on that traditional track. I went to high school, went to college, went to med school. I felt like I really didn’t have any other marketable skills except for what I’d learned through med school. So it was kind of, it is kind of a leap of faith, in the sense that before working with Milan and sort of being a little bit more in that corporate field, I didn’t have a lot of business or entrepreneurial experience.
But I would say the thing is just being willing to take a chance and take a risk to follow your passions. The nice thing, I think, about being a physician is you always have a good career to fall back on. So if you feel like there’s something different or something new that you want to explore, for me at least, I think that’s been huge.
And I think you grow so much as a person knowing that your identity, because I think being a physician can consume so much of your identity. When you start to realize, “I can be that person, but I can use it in avenues that maybe more fit my passions or my personality,” I think it really opens up the world for you and makes you realize that the world’s kind of your oyster, and you’re fortunate enough to have a good backfall if you change your mind or it doesn’t work out the way you want it to.
Kevin Pho: Knowing what you know now, if you were to do this journey outside of traditional clinical practice again, is there anything that you would have done differently?
Kristin Saxena: You know, that is always the question, right? It’s such a tough road, I think, to get to where you are as a physician. You go through so much time, so much energy, so much stress. And I have four kids, and so people are always, you know, my husband and I, neither of us are really practicing traditionally, and so they often will ask us, “Would you tell your kids to be physicians?”
I guess I would just say, if that is truly their passion in life and what they think they want to do, absolutely. I mean, it’s really gotten me to where I am today in terms of the way I’m able to look at the world. Just the experience and training gives you the credentials to feel like you can be an expert in a number of related fields.
So I would say, I don’t know, I wouldn’t do anything any differently, because I feel like I love my life now and it got me where I’m at. But I would encourage my children, and I would encourage anyone asking, don’t feel pigeonholed by these decisions. Just use them. If that’s what you want to do and that’s the life you love, absolutely, but otherwise it can be used as a jumping-off point to do other things.
Kevin Pho: Let’s talk now about your KevinMD article, “The surprising power of family meals.” Now, for those who didn’t get a chance to read your article, can you just walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?
Kristin Saxena: Absolutely. So really, a lot of the impetus in even starting our podcast was I started to realize, as a pediatrician in particular, you’d see families, and almost everyone, almost all parents, have some concern about their children’s eating. They’re eating too much, they’re not eating enough, they’re very picky, they only eat a very small list of foods. It was almost universal that parents worry about that. And at the same time, as you know, we’re starting to see more and more diet-related illnesses in everyone, but unfortunately in children and seemingly at younger ages. So it’s a real public health issue.
But I started to realize, I think as doctors we learn some about nutrition, and we have an idea of, this is the number of calories a child of this age and size should need, this is the number of fruits and vegetables you should get in your diet, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s very prescriptive, and it doesn’t, you know, we have that information, but it doesn’t translate to real life. That kind of advice doesn’t tend to work for adults in improving their diet, and it really doesn’t work in kids. So I could tell a family a million times what they should be eating, but it doesn’t really help.
I started to realize what we need to focus on is how are we eating, how are we approaching food and meals, and until we get that right, you’re not going to be successful in the what. So I started to realize it’s much more about the how, and when you get the how correct, you’re going to have a lot more success in improving your diet. Part of that, one of the big things that I’ve realized and researched, is again this power of family meals. Essentially, the first step is just deciding to eat together, eat the same food together with your family, regardless of what that is or where you’re sitting, all of that.
There’s an author, and she was on our podcast, and that was sort of the impetus for my article. Her name is Miriam Weinstein, and she actually wrote a book called “The Surprising Power of Family Meals.” She’s a journalist by trade, but she did all this research about the benefits to children and their families of just eating together, regardless of the food that they were eating. She found that the nutritional profile of those children was better. They had less risk for both obesity and eating disorders, but beyond that, just behaviorally, academically, and really just life outcomes, those children who had more meals with their family had better outcomes and ended up being more resilient children.
So it was shortly after my recording with Miriam that I was just sitting in a park with my family. I think in the article I mentioned we were eating takeout pizza and fizzy canned beverages. It was hardly the most nutritionally ideal meal that you could be eating. My husband was just telling a story, and he was talking about just a mistake that he had made that week, talking about the emotional roller coaster of that, how he’d felt bad about things, how he was going to do things differently in the future. And I was just kind of sitting back watching, and I could see my kids were taking this all in.
It kind of was just a microcosm of everything that she’d reported, in the sense that I could see it. I was like, “I can see how this builds resilience,” because your kids, for the most part, think their parents are cool, at least for now; my kids are younger. So, you know, Dad’s cool, and he makes mistakes, and he feels bad about things, and he thinks about how he can do better. He makes mistakes and things go wrong, but he’s still sitting here. He’s survived; he’s still thriving.
And I think that’s it. That’s the experience of the family meal and why it builds resilience in kids: It’s that storytelling and that being involved and reaching those decisions on their own, to realize, “I will make mistakes in my life, but I can be OK.” I just couldn’t help but sit back and realize that, and it all kind of came together in one moment.
Kevin Pho: Now, a lot of families, I’m sure that you’ve heard, are super busy, getting back late at night. I have two daughters, one who plays varsity sports, so the practices are at all times of the day. So in light of everyone’s crazy schedules, how does a family make time for family meals?
Kristin Saxena: I think that’s such an excellent point, because I feel like today’s life doesn’t privilege family meals. So in order for you to make it work, you really do have to make it a priority. But the other thing, and that I stress all the time, is it’s all about progress and not perfection, and just meeting you where you are.
So you have to look at your family and realize what works for you. We all think of dinner, but maybe dinner doesn’t work in your household. Maybe it’s breakfast. If you’re not having family meals at all, then make it once a week, or even just once. If this is totally foreign to your family structure, just try one time. And so just figure out where you are and build on it, and don’t expect to change your whole life overnight, because again, that’s sort of a recipe for failure. So again, I would just say make it a priority and start small.
Kevin Pho: So you mentioned you’ve read a book and done a lot of research regarding that power of family meals. What other strengths do family meals purport to the family, and what do you think are some of the reasons why that is?
Kristin Saxena: The benefits are really myriad. As you look at the research, it’s crazy. Like I said, I think that nutritionally and health-wise those kids tend to do better, and I think part of that is just the experience of eating with other people, especially as a child. You see what a complete meal looks like, right? And when you’re talking and it’s a social activity, it becomes a positive experience to be eating. You start to develop a more positive relationship with food. For small children especially, being exposed to more foods and seeing other people eat more foods really contributes to encouraging a child to incorporate more variety into their own diet. So there are those pieces.
But also, the research shows, for example, they found that kids who have more family meals, young children, actually do better reading in kindergarten than kids that don’t, even more so than being read to. And I think a lot of that is just, again, the language usage. It’s being involved in those conversations, and it’s stuff we don’t even realize.
And then beyond that, relating back to the other story, I think it’s really just the conversations and the stories that are told around the table. As kids learn more about their parents and their family history, that helps them to develop that resilience piece, because it’s just hearing hardships and difficulties happen to other people, but seeing that you come out OK in the end. I don’t think it’s easy to understand in the moment, but that experience in itself is really a resilience-building experience for children.
Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Kristin Saxena. She is a pediatrician, and she wrote the KevinMD article “The surprising power of family meals.” Kristin, what are some of your take-home messages and advice that you want to leave for my clinician audience?
Kristin Saxena: My advice would really be to consider the approach that you’re taking when you’re thinking about food, nutrition, and diet-related health issues for your patients, and especially children. Like I said, we get really wrapped up in what we know, which is kind of a prescriptive method: calories, nutrients. But I would say first ask about the how. Are your families eating together? Are they having structured meals? Because again, in order to be successful in improving their diet and their nutrition profile, it’s essential that they figure out that how and get a healthy approach to mealtimes and feeding themselves and their family.
Kevin Pho: Kristin, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight, and thanks again for being on the show.
Kristin Saxena: Thank you.
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