Family meals and body weight in US adults

Abstract

Objective: Family meals are an important ritual in contemporary societies and many studies have reported associations of family meals with several biopsychosocial outcomes among children and adolescents. However, few representative analyses of family meals have been conducted in samples of adults, and adults may differ from young people in predictors and outcomes of family meal consumption. We examined the prevalence and predictors of adult family meals and body weight outcomes. Design: The cross-sectional 2009 Cornell National Social Survey (CNSS) included questions about the frequency of family meals, body weight as BMI and sociodemographic characteristics. Setting: The CNSS telephone survey used random digit dialling to sample individuals. Subjects: We analysed data from 882 adults living with family members in a nationally representative US sample. Results: Prevalence of family meals among these adults revealed that 53 % reported eating family meals seven or more times per week. Predictive results revealed that adults who more frequently ate family meals were more likely to be married and less likely to be employed full-time, year-round. Outcome results revealed that the overall frequency of family meals among adults was not significantly associated with any measure of body weight. However, interaction term analysis suggested an inverse association between frequency of family meals and BMI for adults with children in the household, and no association among adults without children. Conclusions: These findings suggest that family meals among adults are commonplace, associated with marital and work roles, and marginally associated with body weight only in households with children.

The epidemiology of family meals among Ohio’s adults

“…This pattern is consistent with studies of racial/ ethnic disparities in food-related behaviours (34) and diet quality among adults (17,35) and with the lower reported prevalence of family meals among African-American adolescents compared with white adolescents (36) . Sobal and Hanson did not observe differences in family meal frequency relative to race/ethnicity (9) , but it is difficult to make a direct comparison to our results because they presented analyses adjusted simultaneously for multiple sociodemographic variables. Our findings were consistent with those reported by Sobal and Hanson relative to employment and marital status (9) ; employment was associated with a lower frequency of family meals and marriage was associated with a higher frequency.…”

“…Sobal and Hanson did not observe differences in family meal frequency relative to race/ethnicity (9) , but it is difficult to make a direct comparison to our results because they presented analyses adjusted simultaneously for multiple sociodemographic variables. Our findings were consistent with those reported by Sobal and Hanson relative to employment and marital status (9) ; employment was associated with a lower frequency of family meals and marriage was associated with a higher frequency. Differences in social norms and cultural practices can influence the types of food eaten and the timing, social setting and location of eating occasions (37,38) , and our results suggest that there are underlying disparities in family meal frequency that are unrelated to having children in the household.…”

“…For children and adolescents, a higher frequency of family meals is associated with healthier diets (2)(3)(4) and a lower likelihood of reporting disordered eating behaviours (5) , substance use (6) and depressive symptoms (7) . Family meals may help to prevent obesity in children and adolescents (8) and some researchers have found an inverse association between family meal frequency and BMI among parents (9)(10)(11) . Fruit and vegetable consumption may also be higher among parents who eat family meals more often (12) .…”

“…They found that controlling for other demographic characteristics, the presence of minor children (under age 18 years) in the household was not associated with family meal frequency. Sobal and Hanson acknowledged the limitations of their study for examining differences in the frequency of family meals by demographic characteristics, such as the inability to perform stratified analysis due to the small sample size, and called for future research among a large and diverse sample of US adults (9) . Our objectives in the present study were to investigate the epidemiology of family meals in a large representative survey of Ohio adults.…”

Family meal frequency, weight status and healthy management in children, young adults and seniors. A study in Sardinia, Italy

“…Few studies consider adults except as relatives of children involved in dietary education projects (Berge et al, 2012;Boutelle et al, 2007;Larson, Harnack, & Neumark-Sztainer, 2011;Sobal & Hanson, 2011). Otherwise, they study elderly people only if they are widowed (Rosenbloom & Whittington, 1993), community-dwellers (Quigley, Hermann, & Warde, 2008;Shahar, Shai, Vardi, & Fraser, 2003), homebound (Locher et al, 2009) or deprived (Holmes, Roberts, & Nelson, 2008).…”