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Adolescent girls who sit down for frequent meals with their families are half as likely to smoke, drink and use marijuana as those who share family meals less often, according to a new study.
"Part of it is just parents being more in touch with their kids, being able to see earlier on if their kids are veering down a path that might not be filled with healthy choices," says Marla Eisenberg, lead author of the paper and a professor of pediatrics in the University of Minnesota's medical school.
Family meals may also offer protection simply because they increase the amount of time teens spend at home instead of out with their friends, she says - the environment where they are most likely to experiment with cigarettes, drugs and alcohol.
Interestingly, teen boys do not enjoy the same benefit, with frequent family meals having no bearing on their substance use down the road.
"It's really not as clear for boys, we've had a hard time pinning down what's going on with boys," says Eisenberg.
She speculates the difference may be due to the distinct ways in which they engage with their families, with girls tending to be emotionally closer to their parents and better equipped to pick up on "emotional cues" of support.
The data came from about 800 students who were surveyed when aged 10 to 13 and again five years later. The authors defined "frequent" family meals as happening five times a week or more, with about 60 per cent of the adolescents falling into that group at the start.
"That could certainly be Sunday brunch, it could be breakfast everyday before school," Eisenberg says. "We have no reason to believe that this is isolated to dinner. Even increasing the weekly number of meals by one or two has some additional benefit."
What's more, the authors found that eating together has benefits for teen girls no matter how close their families or how good their relationships with their parents.
"We always had family meals (when I was growing up) and I've just kept up that tradition," says Ottawa's Joanne Perry, mother of a 27-year-old son and daughters aged 21, 18 and 14. "I'm a family physician and I'm always shocked and surprised that a lot of families don't do this anymore."
Her family shares cooking duties for dinners together seven days a week, she says, even if one or another member is missing because of sports or other commitments. With her son living on his own and her two oldest daughters home from university for the summer, the dinner table is a place to catch up, she says.
"We just kind of reconnect. 'How was your day, how was school?' and that kind of thing," she says. "If there are a lot of my kids home, then it's kind of their time to tease each other and do the sibling thing."
Family dinners are such an normal part of their household that her children didn't balk at them even in their teenage years, she adds.
"They rebelled against a lot of other things but not about having supper together," Perry says, laughing.
The study is the most recent from Project EAT, an research project examining the eating habits of teens, and will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health. Previous research from the project found that frequent family meals are associated with better nutrition, higher grades, lower risks of suicide and depression, and with lower prevalence of eating disorders in girls.
Shannon Proudfoot, Canwest News Service
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