Background: Research on Family Meals

Martha Marino, MA, RD, CD and
Sue Butkus, PhD, RD

The purpose of this paper is to review what is known about family meals.

Frequency of Family Meals
In recent years, there has been concern that family meals (1,2,3,4) are declining, but the exact number of times a family eats dinner together is elusive. It appears that most families eat dinner together 4 to 5 evenings a week with about 10 percent of families eating together 2 or fewer days a week. (4, 5, 6, 7). Families with younger children seem to eat together more often than families with older children (4, 8). Families with teenagers eat together less often because the teens have more evening activities than younger children. Not only do teens have more activities including part-time jobs, sports, boyfriends and girlfriends, but they have the transportation to do the activities independently.

However, families express a strong commitment to eating together and believe that eating dinner together is important to building a strong family, and that it benefited society as well (7, 12).

Benefits of Eating Together
Communication. In a series of focus groups conducted with low-income program participants by the Nutrition Education Network of Washington participants said they believed that the primary benefit to eating together was strengthening the family by providing opportunities for communication and building relationships (11). Other studies report similar perceptions on the part of parents (12).

Not only do parents want to feel attached to their kids, kids want this too. Oprah Winfrey conducted a "Family Dinner Experiment" in 1993 (13,14). Five families volunteered to accept the challenge to eat dinner together every night for a month, staying at the table for a half-hour each time. As part of the experiment, all family members kept journals to record their feelings about the experience. At first, sharing meals was a chore for many families and the minutes at the table dragged on. But, by the end of the month, the families were happy and planned to continue dining together most evenings if not every night. When the families appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show at the end of the experiment, the greatest surprise to the parents was how much their children treasured the dependable time with their parents at the table.

Better school performance. Family meals appear to give children an edge in the classroom. In a 1994 Louis Harris and Associates survey of 2000 high school seniors (15), students took a test to measure their academic ability and answered a list of personal questions. Students who regularly ate dinner with their families 4 or more times a week scored better than those who ate family dinners 3 or fewer times a week. These results crossed racial lines and were a greater indicator than whether the child was in a one- or two-parent family.

Researchers at the University of Illinois found that children ages 7 to 11 who did well on school achievement tests spent a large amount of time eating meals and snacks with their families. Their achievement was not affected by their mother's employment status, full-time, part-time or not employed (19).

Preschoolers had better language skills when the family ate together (16). Although the researchers believed that there was nothing magical about mealtime, it nevertheless served as the best opportunity for children to have longer conversations with parents and to hear words they rarely would hear other times of the day. The researchers believed that extended conversations provided young children with a chance to think, and that enhanced their linguistic development.

Better adjustment. In a study that followed 65 children over 8 years, Harvard researchers looked at which activities most fostered healthy child development: play, story time, events with family members and other factors. Family dinners won out (18).

Well-adjusted adolescents and frequent family meals are linked, according to psychologists Bowden and Zeisz (17). In a 1997 survey of 527 teens ages 12 to 18, the teens who were best adjusted ate a meal with an adult in their family an average of 5.4 days a week, compared to 3.3 days for teens who didn't show good adjustment. The well-adjusted teens were less likely to do drugs or be depressed and were more motivated at school and had better relationships. The less well-adjusted teens were more likely to be involved with drugs, be depressed, exhibit difficulty getting along with others and have trouble in school. Adjustment was correlated more to shared meals than to any other factor including gender, age or family type. Bowden said that mealtimes were a sort of "marker" for other positive family attributes and seemed to play an important role in helping teens cope well with the stresses of adolescence.

Steve Wolin, psychiatrist at the Family Research Center at George Washington University (14), claims that even if the family has serious problems, such as alcoholism, eating dinner together is still important for family structure. He asserts that children of alcoholics who had family dinners together were less likely to become alcoholics themselves. Despite potential problems, the stability and communication at the table remain important for kids. He advised establishing rules for dinnertime to avoid conflict, such as not discussing school or interpersonal problems and saving conflicts for another time and place.

Better nutrition. Mothers in the Nutrition Education Network of Washington's focus groups said, "When we eat together, we eat better" (11).

Cullen and Baranowski found that students in grades 4 to 6 who ate dinners with their families consumed more vegetables, more fruit and juice, and less soda. When children ate with their families, they used more low fat practices (such as trimming fat from meat and using low fat foods at meals) (19). In the Harvard study children who ate family dinners most days consumed more fruits and vegetables and less fried foods, saturated fats and trans fats and soda than children who ate dinner with family members never or a only a couple of days a week. Children who ate dinners with family members most days had substantially higher intakes of dietary fiber, calcium, iron, folate, vitamins B-6, B-12, C and E. No differences were found for whole grain foods, whole dairy products, red and processed meat or snack foods. An interesting finding was that children who ate family dinners more frequently had more healthy eating habits that were not related to eating family dinner, such as food eaten away from home. The researchers found that the effects of family dinners were similar for both younger and older children. Their results didn't change after adjusting for body mass index, physical activity, hours of television watched, two-parent home or other arrangement, household income or mother's employment (88% of the of the mothers were employed). Similar findings have been found in other studies (20, 21).

Can Family Dinners Be Harmful?
Although sharing food and conversation around the table is generally thought to promote family bondedness, sometimes this can backfire. Controlling and dysfunctional parents sitting face-to-face with children can sometimes lead to long-term scars. Some studies have linked early mealtime experiences with bulimia nervosa (23). Their parents dominated or controlled the conversations, hostilities were brought up and children's opinions were suppressed. The parental control extended to eating and girls felt pressured to eat rapidly, "clean their plates" and finish dinner at the same time as other family members. Their parents used food as a tool for punishment or manipulation, offering food as a treat when the girls were hurt or upset. These experiences were long lasting, and the college women in the study still felt guilty or stressed if they refused food offered by their families.

Obstacles To Family Mealtimes
Conflicting schedules. Almost every piece of research, story in the popular press and comment from parents themselves points to today's hectic lifestyle crowding out time for family dinners and this is supported by several studies (8) of work, social/personal activities, kids' activities and community activities.

The 1996 Washington state focus group study of Food Stamp families (11) also found that varied schedules of family members interfere the most with family meals, especially with adolescents.

No time to cook. With already busy schedules, parents feel they don't have time to cook dinner (6,7). Kentucky Fried Chicken reported that take-out food was used by more than a quarter (28%) of families for the evening meal once a week; 20% said they used carryout twice a week and 12% said three times a week (12). NPPC's 2000 survey (10) found that the meal preparer spends an average of 35 minutes fixing dinner. That survey also determined that about 30 minutes is spent at the table.

Child nutrition expert Ellyn Satter wrote that she often gets resistance when she presses for family meals (25). People tell her that they just don't have enough time to shop and cook. Her response is that eating well is one of life's important issues, and parents need to be willing to devote time and energy to it.

Don't know how to cook. Because of the widespread availability of convenience foods, ready-prepared foods and quick serve restaurants, cooking is no longer a needed skill.

Would rather watch television. About half of all families always have the television on in the background during dinnertime, and about a third of the families usually ate in front of the television. (NPPC and 12, 21) A Missouri survey found that some parents actually preferred eating in front of the television to eating at the table with their families (6).

Summary
Most families do value shared mealtime and are frustrated with their hectic lifestyles that prevent them from cooking and eating together enjoyably. While eating together nightly may be a rigid and unrealistic goal, especially for families with teens, a target of 4 or 5 times a week would provide the benefits known so far. The data suggest that children in families that eat together 3 times a week or less are more prone to trouble in school, poorer diets, behavioral problems and more.

Simply sitting at a common table doesn't automatically mean that the family dinner is nutritious or that the family members communicate well, if at all. To be a positive experience, some families may benefit from meal planning advice and tips for conversation. In rare cases, perhaps skilled guidance by a therapist would be warranted if an overly controlling parent may be driving the child toward an eating disorder. Certainly there is room for research on the impact of family mealtime on a child's nutritional status, subsequent eating behavior, emotional health, sense of attachment, academic performance and so on. Virtually no studies have looked at the impact of family mealtime on parents' physical and emotional health.

Notes

1. "Breakdown of the family meal." Tufts University Health and Nutrition Letter. 9(5):3-5, July 1991.
2. "Families that eat together." Tufts University Health and Nutrition Letter. 15(8):2, October 1997.
3. Mackenzie, Margaret. "Is the family meal disappearing?" Journal of Gastronomy. 7(1):35-45, Winter/spring 1993.
4. Gillman, MW, SL Rifas-Shiman, AL Frazier, HRH Rockett, CA Camargo, AE Field, CS Berkey and GA Colditz. "Family dinner and diet quality among older children and adolescents." Archives of Family Medicine. 9:235-240. March 2000.
5. "Description of subscribers to Making the Most of It: Summary of responses to a direct mail campaign for food stamp recipients with children ages 5 to 11." Nutrition Education Network of Washington, Washington State University, January 2000. Sue Butkus, Washington State University.
6. "Marketing Research on Food Stamp Population - Final Report." Missouri Nutrition Network. August 31, 1997. James R. Davis and Paula McFarling, University of Missouri - Columbia.
7. MealWatch, newsletter from Better Homes and Gardens and Food Marketing Institute, Summer 1995.
8. Correspondence from the National Pork Producers Council, August 6, 1996. "National Eat Dinner Together Week: First Annual Week Encourages Time Spent Together at the Table."
9. The Kitchen Report: A Survey from the National Pork Producers Council. 1998.
10. The Kitchen Report III: A Survey from the National Pork Producers Council 2000. National Pork Producers Council, 515-223-2600, pork@nppc.org
11. Focus Group Report, Nutrition Education Network of Washington. Report by Nancy Lee, Social Marketing Services, Inc., to Sue Butkus, Washington State University Cooperative Extension. July 1996.
12. "Survey finds that Americans still value family dinner." PR newswire, November 14, 1996.
13. "Family Dinner Experiments." Transcript from the Oprah Winfrey Show, November 19, 1993.
14. Wolin, Steve, Family Research Center, George Washington University. Telephone interview January 16, 1998 about his appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, November 19, 1993, "Family Dinner Experiments."
15. Wildavsky, R. "What's behind success in school?" Reader's Digest. October 1994. Pages 49-55.
16. Sanford, Carolyn. "Using 'rare' words at mealtime can enlarge children's vocabulary." record.wustl.edu/archive/1995/09-28-95/4234.html.
17. Bowden BS and JM Zeisz. "Supper's on! Adolescent adjustment and frequency of family mealtimes." Paper presented at 105th Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, 1997, Chicago, Illinois.
18. Carter, Jaine and James D. Carter, Scripps Howard News Service. "Eating Together Strengthens Family Ties." www.newschief.com/stories/022799/lif_family.shtml
19. Cullen, KW and T Baranowski. "Influence of family dinner on food intake of 4th to 6th grade students." Paper presented at The American Dietetic Association's Food and Nutrition Conference, October 2000.
20. Stanek K, D Abbot and S Cramer. "Diet quality and the eating environment of preschool children." Journal of the American Dietetic Association. 90(11):1582-1584, November 1996.
21. "Learning by example: How family meal times could make 'good eating' easier to swallow." www.mori.com/polls/1999/crcjan99.shtml. Posted February 10, 1999.
22. Shils, ME, Olson JA, Shike M, editors. Diet in the Health of Populations. Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease. Philadelphia, Lea & Febiger, 1994. Pages 1617-1620.
23. Miller, DA, K McClusky-Fawcett and LM Irving. "Correlates of Bulimia Nervosa: Early Family Mealtime Experiences." Adolescence. 28(111):621-635. Fall 1993.
    
    For Further Reading See:
24. Doherty, William. The Intentional Family. Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1997. Chapter 2: Family Meals.
25. Satter, Ellyn. Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family. Kelcy Press, Madison, Wisconsin. 1999. Page 53.

On this page:

Frequency of Family Meals

Benefits of Eating Together:

Communication
Better Adjustment of Children
Better Nutrition

Can family Dinners be Harmful?

Obstacles to Family Mealtimes:

Conflicting schedules
No time to cook
Don't know how to cook
Would rather watch television

Summary

References