For Kids’ Sake, Make Family Meals a Habit
March 10, 2009 — Listen up, kids. Sitting down to eat with your parents
night after night might seem like a drag, but over the long run, it’ll be good
for you, a new study says.
Regular family meals improve diet quality during the transition from early
to middle adolescence, researchers report. And a good diet could be habit
forming and carry over into adulthood.
, which can affect health.
Students from suburban and urban public middle schools in the St.
Paul/Minneapolis area completed surveys and a questionnaire in 1998-1999, when
they were 12 or 13 years old. Five years later, they completed another
questionnaire on their family eating habits and patterns as high schoolers.
The study included 303 males and 374 females. Regular family meals were
defined as five or more meals during the week with all or most of the family
living in the house.
Over time, regular family meals declined, the researchers say. Sixty percent
of youngsters had regular family meals during early adolescence vs. 30% during
middle adolescence, researchers say in the March/April issue of the
.
and dinner, and also increased intake of
vegetables, calcium-rich food,
, and nutrients such as calcium,
magnesium, iron, and zinc.
An important finding, the researchers say, is that young people who had
regular family meals when 12-13 and also five years later had better diet
quality.
“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 youths,” write the researchers, including
Teri L. Burgess-Champoux, PhD, RD, LD, of the University of Minnesota’s School
of Public Health. “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 authors point out that the period from 12 to the late teens is “one of
the most dynamic developmental periods” during a person’s lifetime, and thus
habits established in this time frame are more likely to last.
They suggest that parents convey this information to their children and also
help them learn food preparation skills so they’ll still make, eat, and even
enjoy tossed salads when they grow up.

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