Family unit to promote good health

The days when the family unit gathered around the breakfast table to share the first meal of the day are fast disappearing into the history books. What is the impact of this movement in society on the overall diet of family members? A group of French researchers set out to find out more.

They began their study on the premise that there seems to be a consensus that family influences on dietary habits are important but, as yet, no data relative to breakfast have been published.

The objective of the researchers at INSERM U525, Centre de Médecine Préventive in Nancy was to investigate whether and how breakfast energy intake aggregates within French families.

A total of 398 families of the Stanislas Family Study who filled in a 3 day food consumption diary were selected. Absolute and relative breakfast energy intakes (BEI in kcal/day and RBEI in percentage of daily intake, respectively) were both studied.

Results from the study revealed that intra-generation common environmental contribution to total phenotypic variance of BEI and RBEI was higher than inter-generation and that both were increased with the frequency of sharing breakfast.

The scientists concluded that familial habits act on family resemblance in both absolute and relative breakfast energy intakes, in other words, family breakfasts are good for us. They added that the family should be a favourite unit for health and diet promotion programmes.

Full findings are published in the October issue of the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, October 2002, Volume 56, Number 10, Pages 1011-1019.​