Family meals ‘ help teens to be healthy’

IT IS well established that sitting down together at the dinner table promotes family harmony.

And scientists believe it is also good for youngsters’ diets.

Teenagers and young adults growing up in households where parents and children eat together consume more fruit and vegetables and fewer burgers and chips, a study found. Eating as a family may also cut boys’ intake of fizzy drinks.

The study adds to evidence that the breakdown of the traditional evening meal is fuelling obesity.

Researchers asked 2,728 participants aged 14 to 24 who were living with their parents how often they sat down for dinner with their family and about their consumption of fruit and vegetables, sugar- sweetened drinks, fast food and takeaways.

They were also asked how well their family functioned – how it managed daily routines, communicated and connected emotionally.

Lead researcher Kathryn Walton, from Guelph University in Ontario, Canada, said: ‘ Frequent family meals were associated with eating more fruits and vegetables and less fast food and take- out food for young people in both high and lowfunctioning families.’

She said the links between eating meals as a family and healthier food consumption did not change when families were more dysfunctional.

Miss Walton, a nutritionist, added: ‘Adolescence and young adulthood are vulnerable life stages for the development of obesity.

‘Poor dietary intake has been identified as a key risk factor for excess weight gain among these populations, with diet quality often declining from childhood to adolescence and young adulthood.’

The research follows a survey which found that only one in three Britons eat in the dining room, while just under half use the lounge.