Getting the family to sit and eat dinner together each night can be tough, but you really should strive to if you have kids.
A new study from the Universite de Montreal finds kids who routinely eat their meals together with their family are more likely to experience long-term physical and mental health benefits.
"There is a handful of research suggesting positive links between eating family meals together frequently and child and adolescent health," pyschoeducation professor Linda Pagani said. "In the past, researchers were unclear on whether families that ate together were simply healthier to begin with. And measuring how often families eat together and how children are doing at that very moment may not capture the complexity of the environmental experience."
The study looked at children born between 1997-98, who had been followed by researchers since they were 5-months-old.
At age 6, their parents started reporting on whether or not they had family meals together.
At age 10, parents, teachers and the children themselves provided information on the children's lifestyle habits and their psycho-social well-being.
When the family meal was prevalent at age 6, higher levels of general fitness and lower levels of soft-drink consumption were observed at age 10. These children also seemed to have more social skills, as they were less likely to self-report being physical aggressive, oppositional or delinquent at age 10.