April 19, 2023 — Deborah Schranz, a 34-year-old librarian from Teaneck, NJ, has dinner with her family, including her children ages 3 and 6, several nights a week, as well as Saturday lunch. According to her Orthodox Jewish practice, Saturday lunch is also a formal meal. Friday night and Saturday lunch meals tend to be longer than ordinary weeknight meals.
“I start my Saturday lunch with a salad,” Schranz said. “It helps my kids eat more vegetables when they feel hungry and the first food they find is a vegetable.”
Longer meals on Friday night and Saturday also give kids more time to eat healthier foods. A new study suggests that even slightly longer meals can promote healthy eating in children.
A team of German scientists studied 50 parent-child duos who were invited to a video lab for two free dinners, offered under different conditions. The children were between 6 and 11 years old. The participants knew they were being filmed, but not that the researchers were going to measure the amount of fruits and vegetables they ate.
Both meals consisted of cold cuts (cheese and meat) as well as bite-sized fruits and vegetables. At the end of the meal, participants were offered desserts of chocolate pudding or fruit yogurt and cookies. Parents completed questionnaires prior to participation, so all foods were selected based on the child’s preferences.
One meal was defined as a “regular family mealtime length” of 20 minutes, while the other meal lasted 10 minutes longer (30 minutes). The food condition that would be completed first was randomly determined.
The researchers found that children ate significantly more fruits and vegetables when family meals lasted 10 minutes longer than usual, without a similar increase in other, less healthy foods.
The cradle of eating behavior
Principal investigator Jutta Mata, PhD, a professor of health psychology at the University of Mannheim in Germany, said she and her colleagues began the study because about 8 years ago, they wondered “why psychological interventions to change nutrition and eating habits were not as successful as I had hoped.”
One possible explanation they came up with was that “eating is often seen as the result of individual behavior: a person’s individual knowledge, motivation, or willpower determines what and how much they eat, but eating is social behavior.” said. “Most people eat regularly in company. In fact, the word ‘companion’ comes from the Latin words ‘con pan’, the company with which to ‘break bread’, and eating has been shown to be the bonding kit between people.”
He said that eating together is “particularly important for children because parents are not only their children’s nutritional ‘gatekeepers’ (they determine what the child eats), but often eat together with their children.”
In fact, family meals have been called the “cradle of eating behavior,” he said, adding that some anthropologists have even called these joint meals the “cradle of civilization.”
Mata’s group has already reviewed studies showing that family meals were associated with healthier nutrition in children. They also identified mealtime practices (including longer meals) that, when used during family meals, were associated with healthier nutrition in children.
But those studies relied on parents reporting the information. The researchers wanted to look directly at family meals to specifically test whether meal length might contribute to children eating more fruits and vegetables.
Creative ways to increase healthy eating in children
The current study showed that children ate seven more pieces of fruits and vegetables, which translates to about one serving per meal, during longer meals.
“This result is of practical public health importance because 1 additional daily serving reduces the risk of cardiometabolic disease by 6-7%,” the authors wrote.
Longer family meals were also linked to a slower rate of eating, greater feelings of satiety, and a lower risk of obesity, “possibly because increases in satiety played a role in reducing snacking between meals.”
Beyond the increased meal duration, the researchers believe that cutting back on fruits and vegetables might have helped, although that still “has to be proven by empirical research,” Mata said.
“One way to think about eating healthy is as a result of opportunities to do so,” he said. “In the case of our study, we provided the time: extra time in the extended condition; the food: the fruits and vegetables that the child liked were on the table; and an easy format to eat: fruits and vegetables cut into small pieces”.
The authors suggested that families can establish new routines with longer mealtimes, including focusing on the mealtime most likely to be successful (not breakfast, when everyone is in a hurry); adapt to children’s preferences (for example, play background music of their choice); and establish “transparent rules” (for example, everyone stays at the table for a certain amount of time).
“These strategies may not always work,” the authors said. “Changing habits requires effort.”
Schranz has “transparent rules” for introducing healthy eating into her children’s diets. For example, “the kids have to try a piece of whatever I serve,” she said. “They don’t have to like it, and they don’t have to finish it if they don’t like it, but they have to try everything that comes their way.” That includes fruits and vegetables.
An Opportunity for Positive Parenting
“This study was elegantly simple and creates a potential low-cost solution to a common problem: how to get your child to eat more fruits and vegetables,” said Ellen Rome, MD, MPH, director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Adolescent Medicine. Children’s Hospital and professor of pediatrics at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.
“The key finding is not surprising and hopefully reproducible at home,” Rome said. “Even 10 more minutes of a non-rushed meal allowed for a few more bites of available food on their plates, which can help a child feel fuller, reducing the need to snack much later than likely denser foods.” in energy. .”
One important lesson “is that family meals are an opportunity to be positive parents and increase the chance that your child is getting the right foods, in the right balance,” Rome said.
“It’s also a time to model how to have a conversation, how to check in, how to share the memorable events of the day, both sad and joyful, and how to laugh together,” she said. “Worthy targets everywhere!”