The family that eats together, gets healthier together.
That's the finding of a new study by Université de Montréal researchers.
Professor of psychoeducation Linda Pagani said studies up until now focused on snapshots of childhood obesity and the frequency of family meal times.
"Nobody looked at lifestyle, nobody looked at social adjustment," said Pagani, who conducted the study with doctoral student Marie-Josée Harbec.
Pagani said their study looked at the quality of children's family meal times over a long term period - from five-months-old until they were ten. Pagani said thanks to the parents' involvement and social interactions, not only were their children eating more healthy and exercising more,
"In terms of soft drink consumption, they drank (fewer) soft drinks. They were also less physically aggressive, less oppositional, they were less delinquent," said Pagani in an interview with CJAD 800 News.
Pagani said these children ended up learning healthier habits from parents who also monitored and limited the amount of junk food they ate and generally signed them up for physical activities, becoming "a role model for healthful eating." Children, in turn, wanted to "imitate parental attitudes and habits during meal time."
"There are these relationships that we see between eating alone, having a tv in your bedroom, being constantly on social media, instead of being in the contact of other people - this makes young people less likely to develop emotional intelligence because emotional intelligence is based on interactions between people," said Pagani.
Pagani said they hope they can help turn the tide with their study that is featured in the latest issue of The Journal of Developmental and Behavioural Pediatrics.
"In the occidental world, family meal frequency is going down, people are eating less and less together, children are eating more and more alone," said Pagani.
"Meal time is a really important thing."