Eating with family keeps girls healthy

MEALS at the family dinner table could be the key to preventing a generation of teenage girls from developing eating disorders. New research shows girls who regularly have family meals are much less likely to adopt extreme weight control behaviours such as vomiting, binge eating and using laxatives or diet pills. A study surveying more than 2500 American high school students found that girls who ate five or more family meals a week had a much healthier relationship with food in later life. The research, published in international journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, polled students aged 13 to 17 in 1999 who were followed up five years later. Regular family meals were found to have a protective effect regardless of the girls' age, weight, socio-economic status, dieting habits or relationship with her family.

SMH 9 Jan 2008