Family meals are good for grown-ups too
Regardless of parental status, adults who eat with others tend to eat more fruits and vegetables and less fast food than those who eat alone. Even when preparing a meal at home isn’t particularly focused on healthy cooking, home-cooked meals lower the odds that adults will be obese. Large portion sizes, the embrace of fried foods and a heavy hand with butter are more common at restaurants than in a civilian’s kitchen.
Adults who park their dinner plates in front of the television may have a greater chance of weight gain, just as evidence from the US, Sweden, Finland, and Portugal supports the connection between obesity and children’s eating dinner while watching TV.
In addition to these benefits of dining with others, there are additional boosts for adults who eat with their children — and they pertain equally to mothers and fathers. When children are present at mealtime, parents may eat more healthily, perhaps to model good behaviour and provide the best nourishment they can to their children. When there is plenty of conversation with children chiming in, the pace of eating slows down, allowing diners’ brains to register fullness and signal that it’s time to stop eating.
For children, eating more family meals is associated with lower rates of obesity. The act of eating with others does not correlate with reduced weight gain in adults, though — unless their dining companions include children. Parents who dine with their children also tend to report less dieting and binge-eating behaviour. Parents may dial back some of these destructive behaviours when they know their children are watching and ready to imitate.
DESPITE ALL THE WORK, A BOOST FOR MENTAL HEALTH
It may seem counterintuitive that a process that demands so much time and resources — the energy to plan the meal, shop for it, prepare it, serve it, and clean up after — could also lead to boosts in mental health. Much more obvious is how children would benefit from their parents’ demonstrating their love and care by providing nightly dinners.
But researchers have found that having frequent family meals is associated with better mental health for both mothers and fathers, despite mothers’ carrying more of the burden of meal prep. Compared with parents who rarely ate family meals, parents who regularly dined with their children reported higher levels of family functioning, greater self-esteem and lower levels of depressive symptoms and stress.
And mental health benefits don’t depend on a slow-roasted pork shoulder or organic vegetables. Since it’s the atmosphere at the dinner table that contributes most significantly to emotional well-being, takeout or prepared food eaten at home will work nicely too.
In an earlier study of parents of infants and toddlers, couples who attached more meaning and importance to family meals were more satisfied with their marital relationship. It’s unclear in which direction the causality goes. Is it that those in more satisfying marriages gravitate toward creating daily rituals? Or that enacting daily rituals leads to more robust relationships? In either case, the establishment of meaningful rituals, like shared mealtime, during early stages of parenthood may add some predictability and routine at a time of life that can be very busy and fragmented.
Just as for children, family dinner is the most reliable time of the day for adults to slow down and talk to others. It’s a time to step away from video calls, e-mails and to-do lists, and instead connect face to face. Dinnertime often allows for a few laughs, a time to decompress and also to solve logistical problems and talk about the day’s events and what tomorrow holds.
FAMILY MEALS ARE A COVID-19 HABIT TO KEEP
For parents taking the long view, there is another perk to family dinner. When adolescents grow up having regular family dinners, they are much more likely to replicate that practice in their own homes when they become parents. Adults who reported having had six to seven family meals a week as a child went on to have frequent family meals with their own children. Family dinner and its benefits may be an heirloom you pass along to future generations.
Shared mealtime, however, is not equally accessible to all. Frequent family dinners are more common among white Americans, those with higher levels of education, married people, and those with household incomes that are middle class or higher. While family meal frequency in the US remained quite steady overall from 1999 to 2010, it decreased significantly (47 per cent to 39 per cent) for lowincome families while increasing (57 per cent to 61 per cent) for high-income families. This gap can be understood in terms of structural disparities: Low-income parents often have less control over their work schedules and may need to juggle more than one job to make ends meet.
As people now tiptoe back to living more expansively, many are reflecting on what they learned during the pandemic that might be worth holding on to. There is some evidence that more families ate more meals together during the coronavirus pandemic than ever before. Some families who didn’t prioritise eating together pre-pandemic may emerge from the past year with a new appreciation of the joys of commensality. Of course, others may already be bookmarking all their favourite restaurants, eager to have chefs cook for them after feeling depleted by so much home labour.
But parents may want to remember that the science suggests shared mealtime is good for the mental and physical health of each member of the family. As people start to heal from this past year of loss, disruption and anxiety, why not continue to engage in nourishing practices that are helpful to all? In my family therapy practice, it will be a top recommendation.
Taken from the article was originally published on an independent and non-profit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.
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