You may want to think about eating meals as a family for more than just the holidays. A new study from the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that eating meals as a family can improve children s eating habits. The more family meals taken together, the better but some benefit accrues even if it only happens for one or two meals a week.
Researchers looked at 2,400 children at 52 primary schools in south London. Food diaries were collected from parents and fieldworkers, accounting for all the foods a child consumed in one 24-hour period. Parents were also asked a series of questions meant to gauge their attitudes towards fruits and vegetables. Of the families involved in the study, 656 families said they always ate meals together at a table, 768 said they sometimes ate meals together and 92 families said they never ate meals together. Children in the always group ate five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, children in the sometimes group ate 4.6 servings per day and children in the never group ate 3.3 servings per day.
These results may be instructive for many families since the demands of modern life may make it seem impossible to eat together all the time, or even often. Meaghan Christian, a co-author of this study, said: This research shows that even just Sunday lunch round the table can help improve the diets of our families. And Professor Janet Cade of the University of Leeds school of food science and nutrition, who supervised the research, added, Watching the way their parents or siblings eat and the different types of food they eat is pivotal in creating children s own food habits and preferences.
ACSH s Dr. Ruth Kava adds: This study emphasizes what many nutritionists know that children model their food preferences on what they experience at home. Also, it should provide parents more reason to eat healthfully themselves.