Even without kids, couples eat frequent family meals

Couples and other adult family members living without minors in the house are just as likely as adults living with young children or adolescents to eat family meals at home on most days of the week, new research suggests.

The study is the first large-scale look at family-meal eating patterns in American adults. While a substantial amount of research has focused on health benefits for children who regularly eat family meals, such eating patterns have not been widely studied in adult-only households.

Researchers analyzed data on more than 14,000 Ohio adults, comparing family-meal patterns among adults who lived with minor children to households with at least two adult family members and no children under age 19 living with them. In both types of households, about half of the families ate meals together six or seven days per week.

Because most Ohio demographics are comparable to the entire United States, the researchers say they would expect to find similar patterns in national data.

The finding is a first step toward exploring whether adults who eat frequent family meals also experience health benefits. Previous research has suggested that children and adolescents who eat frequent family meals have healthier diets and are less likely to report eating disorders, substance use and depressive symptoms.

"There are a lot of families that don't have children. And we've forgotten about them in this context of thinking about sharing food and time together and what that means," said Rachel Tumin, a doctoral student in epidemiology at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study.

"If all adults eat frequent family meals, then it's worth thinking of them as a holistic group versus maintaining a more narrow focus on just those adults who have minor children living with them," Tumin said. "If the answer had been that adults with no kids at home never eat family meals, then there would be no point in subsequent research to find out if it's good for them. But with these data, we can bring this whole other group along with us in our thinking as we shift to exploring in what ways family meals are beneficial to overall public health."

Tumin conducted the research with senior author Sarah Anderson, associate professor of epidemiology at Ohio State. The study is published in the journal Public Health Nutrition.

The researchers used data from the 2012 Ohio Medicaid Assessment Survey, which collects information on health behaviors, health status and demographic characteristics from a random sample of the state's adults. Of the 22,929 respondents surveyed, data on 14,057 adults who lived with at least one family member – 5,766 who lived with minor children and 8,291 adults not living alone or with minor children – were used for this new analysis.

In all households studied, family members living together were related by birth, marriage, adoption or legal guardianship. Of the individuals from the original survey not included in the Ohio State study, 7,788 did not live with any family members and the rest were ineligible because their data were incomplete.