Eating together as a family 5 or more times a week reduces eating disorders in adolescent girls. So says a study published this month in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
In this 5-year longitudinal study of more than 2500 adolescents, Neumark-Sztainer and colleagues found that extreme weight control behaviors, such as using diet pills or laxatives or vomiting, were 3-fold more common among females than males. Having at least 5 family meals together per week lowered this risk by 30% among females. However, among males, regular family meals were associated with skipping meals and eating little.
I wonder what percent of families today actually eat together at least 5 times a week?
I think we hit the 5 mark most weeks, mostly thanks to Mr TBTAM, who is firmly convinced that shared meal time is critical for us as a family, and god bless him, cooks dinner most weeknights to be sure that happens. I, on the other hand, would skip dinner or eat on the run if it were up to me. And I’m the one with the over-eating disorder. (By the way, my family ate together pretty much every night growing up. But there were nine of us, and some foods were in limited supply, so I think that led to us all gorging when food was around as opposed to just eating when we were really hungry. Just my own little psychoanalysis….)
How about your family? Take the survey over there on the sidebar for an informal poll of TBTAM readers’ family eating habits.
Interesting post, TBTAM. My family usually eats dinner together at least 5 times a week…or should I say we did, until #1 Child went to college and #2 Child got a job working 3-7 some evenings. Even now, we eat dinner as a family as much as possible. We just enjoy it.
Does it seem to matter which meals–breakfast vs dinner?
Dinner is a tough one. I commute an hour each way. If I can get out of the office by 6 it’s a good day. That gets me home by 7. If this is the case then we get a meal together provided that we don’t have lacrosse practices, soccer practices, piano lessons, guitar lessons, etc. All of the extra cirriculars can get in the way too.
I also travel with my job, and that takes me out of the family meal plan quite a bit.
I grew up eating every day at 6 sharp. My dad would get home at about 5:30, and dinner would begin at 6 – no exceptions. Now, my mother is no chef, so the meal was typically rushed, and either frozen or burned. Due to the stress of hitting the requisite deadline, the meals were seldom without some kind of yelling session.
So, I may miss meals, but when we sit down as a family, there is no yelling, less stress, and I enjoy it so much more…
We always ate dinner as a family. And we always ate with Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor. When they were speaking, we were not. Consquently, I am not a good conversationalist during mealtime. HOWEVER, when Jeopardy came on (after Walter said goodnight), all bets were off. You were expected to play. I value our dinnertime Jeopardy as an integral part of my educational experience. Bizarre, but true.
Addendum to above: Dinner was always a “restaurant-worthy” meal: salad, entree, vegetable, starch. My father never had a frozen meal in his life. I made him Hamburger Helper about 2 months before he died—he wondered why he’d never had that before. Imagine that–he liked it. Hope it didn’t kill him!
Mon mari and I sit down, with lit candles and wine, every night and have always done so, even when we both worked crazy schedules and our son was in school. I think it’s the only thing that kept us grounded and sane then…and now it’s just a nice habit!
Of course, we often don’t eat until 10:00 but what else would we be doing? We get chores/projects done first.
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I know this comment comes 2 years late but I think your psychoanalysis is very interesting! My sister and I have both made a similar observation about our relationship with food. At least we’re not alone (neither are you)!
Laura-interesting that we’ve hit on similar maybe were on to something…
Peggy