No time for family meals – what's a family to do?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose Much research has touted the health benefits of family meals for adolescents, particularly for healthier diets. However, some families experience barriers (e.g., busy schedules, lack of cooking skills) that make it difficult to have regular family meals. Parents may need guidance about other ways that they might promote healthy eating in their adolescent children. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of the home and family environment at different levels of family meal participation to see what factors are associated with adolescent fruit and vegetable (FV) intake. Results will inform recommendations regarding how other factors in the home environment may promote similar health benefits as having family meals Methods Data were drawn from EAT 2010 (Eating and Activity in Teens), a diverse population‐based study of 2,793 adolescents attending 20 public middle/high schools in Minneapolis/St‐Paul during 2009–2010. Adolescents completed an FFQ and survey items about home environmental factors hypothesized to be related to FV intake (FV availability, FV accessibility, parent encouragement, family communication, and family functioning). Linear regression models were used to examine: 1) individual associations between family meals, home factors and FV intake; 2) the relative influence of family meals and each home factor on FV intake; and 3) interactions between family meal frequency and the presence of other healthful home factors. Models were adjusted for age, sex, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity and energy intake. Results In unadjusted models, all home factors were positively associated with FV intake. In mutually adjusted models, family meals, FV availability, FV accessibility, and parent encouragement for healthy foods were independently associated with higher FV intake. Among the 949 (35%) adolescents who reported infrequent family meals (≤2 days/week), greater home FV availability, FV accessibility, and parent encouragement were each associated with an approximately half serving increase in FV per day. Adolescents having regular family meals in addition to more favorable home characteristics had up to an additional one serving increase in FV per day. Conclusion Regular family meals in combination with other home environmental factors were associated with the best outcomes; however, instructing families to provide healthy foods and encouragement may lead to meaningful nutritional benefits in the absence of family meals. Support or Funding Information This study was supported by Grant Number R01HL084064 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (PI: Dianne Neumark‐Sztainer). AWW was supported by a fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".