Eat, Pray, Love

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The Gilliams

Nick Vedros for TIME

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The Gilliams didn't particularly enjoy eating out every night; they just felt they had no other choice. Both Greg Gilliam, a pastor in Independence, Mo., and his wife Chris, a clerical assistant, work full time. Chris' daughter Samantha, 18, and the couple's daughter Abigail, 6, are busy all day with school and extracurricular activities, not to mention the church functions that the family attends three times a week. Their collective schedule left little time for food-shopping, let alone preparing meals at home. "By the time we came home, it would be late, and we knew that eating late wasn't healthy," says Chris. "So [dinners were] fast food because there wasn't time to cook a meal."

The Gilliams are not the only family stuck in a fast-food rut. For even the most well-intentioned working parents, having the will to eat right doesn't necessarily mean being able to find a way to do so. Everyday life--in the form of work, school and other activities--always seems to get in the way. In fact, recent studies show that one of the most important factors that determine how healthily, or unhealthily, Americans eat is workplace demands. And when parents start taking nutritional shortcuts for the sake of their schedules, their children are more likely to do the same.

In a recent study of 50 low- and middle-income working moms and dads, for instance, researchers at Cornell University found that only 40% of mothers said they had time to cook a meal at home five or more days a week. More than half the parents in the survey admitted that in order to accommodate their work hours, they ate in the car, opted for quick-fix solutions like frozen dinners, bought take-out meals on the way home or skipped meals instead of cooking. Some chose not to clock out--and give up wages--for a meal break. "There are some people for whom the structure at work does not allow them to eat the way we recommend," says Carol Devine, a professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell and an author of the study. "We are not going to fix all of our obesity problems simply by telling people to eat more fruits and vegetables."

In part, then, it's up to employers to help their workforce stay healthy. Giving hourly-shift workers more paid breaks often helps, as does installing a central pantry area where workers can refrigerate and heat food brought from home. Some employers, like Dow Chemical, have started to address these challenges and are working to encourage their employees to eat better--by stocking more nutritious snacks in the vending machine and by ensuring that senior management recognize and reward healthy habits among workers. To help employers continue to promote these choices, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute is now funding studies to further investigate how work environments affect diet and what conditions need to change before working parents start eating healthier.

But offices and factories aren't the only places where eating habits can go awry. Experts are realizing that it takes the collaboration of an entire community--from employers to school districts to food retailers--to help families learn to cook and eat healthy meals at home instead of getting dinner handed to them through a car window. "It's not just about telling people what they should do, but making it easier for them to do it," says Dr. David Katz, director and co-founder of the Yale University Prevention Research Center.