Family meals put health on the menu
A family meal, whether it’s loaded with Brussels sprouts or carrots, might provide more than just nutrition. It might also improve teenagers’ emotional health.
“The family mealtime could provide kind of an informal check-in time, a little reminder that you’re part of a group of people that care about you,” said Marla Eisenberg, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota and the lead author of a new study on the effect of dining as a family.
Adolescents who ate five or six meals a week with their families were 7% to 24% less likely to smoke cigarettes or marijuana, drink alcohol, get lower grades, show signs of depression or think about or attempt suicide than teens who had three or four family meals a week, the study found. The more meals the teens ate with families, the less likely they were to have these problems.
Family meals appeared to have a more positive effect on girls than boys. Girls who said they ate more than seven meals a week with their families were almost half as likely to report attempting suicide as girls who said they never sat down to eat with their families. Boys who ate more family meals did not have a significantly different risk of suicide than those who ate fewer.
Previous studies have shown that family meals were associated with how much children felt their parents cared about them. Children who feel close to their parents have a reduced risk of drug use, emotional problems, violence and sexual activity.
In the study, conducted in 1998 and 1999, researchers at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis surveyed 4,746 11- to 18-year-olds in the Twin Cities about their families’ eating habits, their grades, drug use and mental health. Meals didn’t have to be in the evening nor be home-cooked to qualify as family meals.
Researchers said that teenagers who spend more time with their families might have fewer opportunities to smoke or drink.
Results of the surveys were published in the August issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
