Eating with family may improve teens' eating habits

Washington, March 10: Adolescents who eat regularly with their family members develop healthier eating habits, concludes a latest study that examined the association between the regular family meals and the development of good eating habits in adolescents.

If you want your kids to eat healthy food then you may have to eat with them, the new study has suggested.

In the study, carried out by School of Public Health, University of Minnesota (U-M) researchers, youths who ate regularly with family members reported more healthful diets and meal patterns than those without regular family meals.

For their study, lead researcher Teri L. Burgess-Champoux, PhD, RD, LD, drew data from Project EAT, a population-based, longitudinal study designed to investigate the factors influencing eating habits of adolescents.

In the project, the investigators examined socio-environmental, personal, and behavioral determinants of dietary intake and weight status among an ethnically diverse sample of adolescents in order to determine if youth are meeting national dietary recommendations, as well as to explore dieting and physical activity patterns among youth.

The investigators questioned young adolescents about their eating habits when they were 12- and 13-year-old (referred to as Time 1) and then again 5 years later (referred to as Time 2).

The study collected data from 303 male and 374 female adolescents. The findings demonstrated that those who had regular family meals, defined as five or more meals together per week, were more likely to eat healthy later on.

These healthy meals included consuming breakfast, vegetables, calcium-rich food, dietary fiber, and several nutrients including calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, and zinc.

The findings further showed that sixty percent of participants had regular family meals during early adolescence compared to thirty percent during middle adolescence.

"These findings suggest that having regular family meals during the transition from early to middle adolescence positively impacts the development of healthful eating behaviors for youth,” notes Burgess-Champoux.

He further says: “Findings from the current analysis, in conjunction with similar findings from a longitudinal analysis of older adolescents transitioning to young adulthood, strongly suggest that regular family meals have long-term nutritional benefits...The importance of incorporating shared mealtime experiences on a consistent basis during this key developmental period should be emphasized to parents, health care providers, and educators."

Shockingly, overall dietary adequacy was not achieved for the entire study sample even though adolescents had regular family meals at both Time 1 and Time 2.

The findings appear in the March/April 2009 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.