Regular meals and eating disorders

As children go through adolescence disordered eating behaviours, including binge eating and self-induced vomiting, become more common. Disordered eating behaviours are associated with a number of harmful behavioural, physical and psychological consequences including poor quality diets, weight gain, obesity, depressive symptoms and the onset of eating disorders. A study of 2,516 adolescents in Minnesota looked at how often children ate with their families, their weight, their feelings of family connectedness and their eating behaviour. Girls who ate five or more meals with their families a week in 1999 were significantly less likely to use self-induced vomiting or laxatives to control their weight in 2004 regardless of their sociodemographic status, body mass index or family connectedness although this did not hold true for teenage boys.

You can read more about this research at

http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/01/08/regular-family-meals-lower-risk-of-disordered-eating/1755.html