Eating family meals seems to be more important than merely for the family ties. New research says that regular family meals help the kids grow up better physically and psychologically. Says new research in the ‘Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics’, children who routinely eat their meals together with their family are more likely to experience long-term physical and mental health benefits.
There is a handful of research suggesting positive links between eating family meals together frequently and child and adolescent health, the researchers observe. Says researcher Linda Pagani of the Université de Montréal, “In the past, researchers were unclear on whether families that ate together were simply healthier to begin with. And measuring how often families eat together and how children are doing at that very moment may not capture the complexity of the environmental experience.”
The study looked at children who had been followed by researchers since they were five months old as part of the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development. At age six, their parents started reporting on whether or not they had family meals together. At age 10, parents, teachers and the children themselves provided information on the children’s lifestyle habits and their psychosocial wellbeing.
The researchers found that when the family meal environment quality was better at age six, the levels of general fitness were high while the levels of soft-drink consumption were low at age 10. The children also seemed to have more social skills, as they were less likely to self-report being physical aggressive or oppositional at age 10. Says co-researcher Marie-Josée Harbec, “Because we had a lot of information about the children before age 6 like their temperament and cognitive abilities, their mother’s education and psychological characteristics, and prior family configuration and functioning, we were able to eliminate any pre-existing conditions of the children or families that could throw a different light on our results. It was really ideal as a situation.”
The study notes that the presence of parents during mealtimes likely provides young children with firsthand social interaction, discussions of social issues and day-to-day concerns, and vicarious learning of pro-social interactions in a familiar and emotionally secure setting. Experiencing positive forms of communication may likely help the child engage in better communication skills with people outside of the family unit. The findings suggest that family meals are not solely markers of home environment quality, but are also easy targets for parent education about improving children’s physical and mental wellbeing.