More than just food: a meta-analysis of family mealtime practices and children’s nutritional health

Abstract

Family meals can be called the cradle of eating behavior: by the age of ten, a child has eaten about 10,000 meals, most of them in a family setting. The aim of this meta-analysis was to reveal potentially protective practices that could explain why frequent family meals foster children’s nutritional health (i.e., body mass index and diet quality). No randomized controlled trials on potential family meal practices and nutritional health in children are currently available. We conducted a systematic review and identified seven mealtime practices frequently investigated in the context of children’s nutritional health. We ran separate meta-analyses and found the following consistently positive associations for all family mealtime practice and nutritional health: parental role modeling, children’s involvement, positive atmosphere, meal quality, TV off, meal duration, and frequent family meals. We discuss the generalizability of the identified protective mealtime practices to other social contexts and their potential policy implications.