Objective: Family meals are an important ritual in contemporary societies and many studies have reported associations of family meals with several biopsychosocial outcomes among children and adolescents. However, few representative analyses of family meals have been conducted in samples of adults, and adults may differ from young people in predictors and outcomes of family meal consumption. We examined the prevalence and predictors of adult family meals and body weight outcomes.
Design: The cross-sectional 2009 Cornell National Social Survey (CNSS) included questions about the frequency of family meals, body weight as BMI and sociodemographic characteristics.
Setting: The CNSS telephone survey used random digit dialling to sample individuals.
Subjects: We analysed data from 882 adults living with family members in a nationally representative US sample.
Results: Prevalence of family meals among these adults revealed that 53 % reported eating family meals seven or more times per week. Predictive results revealed that adults who more frequently ate family meals were more likely to be married and less likely to be employed full-time, year-round. Outcome results revealed that the overall frequency of family meals among adults was not significantly associated with any measure of body weight. However, interaction term analysis suggested an inverse association between frequency of family meals and BMI for adults with children in the household, and no association among adults without children.
Conclusions: These findings suggest that family meals among adults are commonplace, associated with marital and work roles, and marginally associated with body weight only in households with children.