{"id":4072,"date":"2007-10-18T05:14:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-18T05:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=4072"},"modified":"2025-09-30T01:55:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T01:55:33","slug":"the-benefits-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=4072","title":{"rendered":"The benefits of the family meal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like the prior posting, this article is from yesterdays Health section of the NY Times.<\/strong> And a very good article.<\/p>\n

The Family Meal Is What Counts, TV On or Off – New York Times<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Families who watched TV at dinner ate just about as healthfully as families who dined without it. The biggest factor wasn\u2019t whether the TV was on or off, but whether the family was eating the meal together.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, we want people eating family meals, and we want them to turn the TV off,\u201d said Shira Feldman, public health specialist at the university\u2019s School of Public Health and lead author of the research. \u201cBut just the act of eating together is on some level very beneficial, even if the TV is on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research, published this month in The Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, is the latest testament to the power of the family meal. While many parents worry about what their kids are eating \u2014 vegetables versus junk \u2014 a voluminous body of research suggests that the best strategy for improving a child\u2019s diet<\/a> is simply putting food on the table and sitting down together to eat it. <\/p>\n

The importance of the family meal has been shown mainly in studies from the University of Minnesota, Harvard and Rutgers that have looked at family eating habits of nearly 40,000 middle-school students and teenagers. The research has shown that those who regularly have meals with their parents eat more fruits, vegetables and calcium-rich foods, ingest more vitamins<\/a> and nutrients, and consume less junk food. Some of the research has shown that kids who regularly sit down to a family meal are at lower risk for behaviors like smoking<\/a> and drug and alcohol use.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like the prior posting, this article is from yesterdays Health section of the NY Times. And a very good article. The Family Meal Is What Counts, TV On or Off – New York Times Families who watched TV at dinner ate just about as healthfully as families who dined without it. The biggest factor wasn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9385,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072\/revisions\/9385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}