title: Family dinner frequency, settings and sources, and body weight in US adults.
abstract: Contemporary families and food systems are both becoming more dynamic and complex, and current associations between adult family meals and body mass index (BMI) are not well understood. This investigation took a new approach by examining diverse settings and sources of food for family dinners in relationship to BMI in a cross-sectional nationally representative survey of 360 US adults age 18-85 living with family members. In this sample, 89% of adults ate family dinners at least 5 days per week and almost all ate family dinners cooked and eaten at home. About half of these adults also ate family dinners at restaurants, fast food places, or ate takeout food at home, and less common were family dinners at homes of relatives or friends. Family dinners eaten at fast food places, but not other settings or sources, were significantly associated with higher BMI. Overall, adult family dinners were commonplace, usually involved home cooking, and when at fast food places may be related with higher adult body weights.
authors.affiliation: Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853 USA. Electronic address: js57@cornell.edu.
authors.forename: Jeffery
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sobal
authors.affiliation: Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853 USA.
authors.forename: Karla
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hanson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015992:Body Mass Index; D001835:Body Weight; D002648:Child; D003296:Cooking; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003625:Data Collection; D005190:Family; D057140:Fast Foods; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D062407:Meals; D008875:Middle Aged; D009765:Obesity / Q000209:etiology*; D012147:Restaurants; D012919:Social Behavior; D014481:United States
keywords: Body weight; Dinner; Family meal; Fast food; Home; Obesity