Communal Eating Keeps Children Healthy

Children’s diets are always far from being balanced especially when they are allowed to eat alone. Engaging in communal eating by families usually signifies that there is a kind of bond that holds them together. Apart from this reason, when families eat together it helps reduce eating disorder in children. RALIAT AHMED-YUSUF explains why this is so.

Eating together goes well beyond simply sharing a table. While it is an important part of building relationship between parents and children, it helps to monitor eating habits in them which in turn prevents eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia in them.

When families eat together, meals are also less likely to be skipped, and adolescents used to eating round the table are less likely to take up smoking to lose weight.

Bulimia and anorexia that can get parents really worried. Bulimia is characterised by rapidly consuming large amounts of food and then purging (emptying the stomach, often by vomiting or using laxative). Anorexia on the other hand is an eating disorder where people starve themselves. It usually begins in young people around the onset of puberty. Anorexia sufferers, either refuse to eat or eat in such small amounts that they become.

These eating disorders, the study suggests can be reduced when families eat meals together.

Researcher, Barbara Fiese, a Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Illinois said: ‘The common belief is that teens don’t want to be around their parents very much, and that teens are just too busy for regular meals with the family.

Teenagers who eat with their parents are likely to be more connected, making conversations about bad diet and dangerous eating habits less awkward, she noted.

Dr .Mrs Braimah, an Abuja based Public Health Physician, says eating together as a family has a lot of advantages. Children naturally tend to copy a lot from adults and imbibing the culture of eating together helps to check and monitor their eating habits. If parents are healthy eaters, the children automatically are healthy eaters.

Eating as a family also helps to monitor the kind of food a child likes.Allergy to particular foods are easily detected in this situation. Before a child adopts a particular food, it has to be offered several times.

Braimah, also stated that meals are also less likely to be skipped when families eat together because a child that has to be forced to eat already knows the meal time and would have no choice than to eat at that particular time. Other advantages are: you get to eat balanced diet, save money by serving the right food and in the right proportion too.

She, added that a bulimic child eats everything he or she sees and end up vomiting it secretly without the knowledge of the parents while an anorexic child would not eat at all until after being scolded or even beating where necessary. These disorders are easily monitored and checked at the eating table. In America, obesity is the fastest growing disease which gives rise to diabetes, she noted.

 Professor Fiese in her research observed that parents may not be able to get their families together around the table seven days a week, but if they can schedule three family meals a week, they will safeguard their teens’ health in significant ways.

Fiese revealed this after reviewing 17 studies on eating patterns and nutrition involving almost 200,000 children and teenagers.

She found that teenagers who eat at least five meals a week with their families are 35 per cent less likely to be ‘disordered eaters’.

Even three family meals a week helped, with youngsters 12 per cent less likely to be overweight than those who ate with their families less often. Teens can also use family meals as a time to get their thoughts across.

They were also 24 per cent more likely to eat healthy foods and have healthy eating habits than those who didn’t share three meals with their families, the journal Pediatrics reports.

The University of Illinois professor said that families who eat together are likely to be more connected, making conversations about bad diet and dangerous eating habits less awkward.

She said: ‘For children and adolescents with disordered eating, mealtime provides a setting in which parents can recognise early signs and take steps to prevent detrimental patterns from turning into full blown eating disorders.

Teens can also use family meals as a time to get their thoughts across.

Professor Fiese said: ‘Family meals give them a place where they can go regularly to check in with their parents and express themselves freely.

‘If family meals are not a forced activity, if parents don’t totally control the conversation, and if teens can contribute to family interaction and feel like they’re benefiting from it, older kids are likely to welcome participating.’

Previous American research found children who miss out on family meals are much more likely to struggle at school, drink and take drugs.