It doesn't sound like a brainstorm, does it, that eating might combat eating disorders? But really, a new study showing that eating five family meals a week helps prevent girls from extreme weight control behaviors, is (for lack of a better term) huge. Why? Because it gets at some key issues in keeping our kids, especially our girls, fed, healthy and frankly, alive.
First, it is a good reminder that turning off Wheel of Fortune does more than help prevent our kids from using drugs, skipping school, hating us permanently and killing each other. Second, it shows that simple rituals, like setting the table and heating up a Stouffer's lasagna, models something more than the value of forcing your way begrudgingly through quality family time. I also wonder if some of this meal time magic also involves letting girls actually see their parents, and specifically mothers, eat. And of course, there is the power of just checking in with the children, spending time around a table full of (moderately) healthy food and (moderately) invested conversation.
And because research is so drinking-a-glass-of-wine-a-day-prevents-cancer/drinking-a-glass-of-wine-a-day-causes-all-kinds-of-cancer, the study also indicates that what may be good for the girls, may not be good for your boys. Family meal time that may serve your daughters well, it says, may be involved in increased unhealthy eating behaviors in your sons. Researchers say the gender differential could be playing on some boys' predisposition to eating disorders or simply that girls benefit from family meals than boys. You are damned if you have both boys and girls at your dining room table, I guess. If there are girls alone, though, the study says the likelihood eating disordered behavior in them may be reduced by as much as a third.
Of course, of course, eating disorders in our children are very serious and we don't want any of that obsession with thin seeping into the fresh and beautiful minds of our babies. As much as I might kid, I imagine that every parent reading would do anything -- including missing an episode of House Hunters and whipping up some sloppy joes -- to help counter self-starvation, bingeing, purging, laxative abuse, exercise compulsion and other awful obsessions embodied in our daughters.
Weekday meals seemed to work in boosting the chances of raising healthy eaters in this study, but do you think it would hold true in your family?
