[Can family meals protect adolescents from obesity?]

To analyse the relationship between the frequency of family meals and the body weight of 13-year-olds and its selected determinants.

The study was conducted in 2008 as the last stage in a prospective cohort study of 605 children. Questionnaires containing questions about the frequency of family meals, the general regularity of meals, fruit and vegetable consumption, physical activity and the number of hours spent watching television or at the computer were sent to 13-year-olds by mail. School nurses performed anthropometric measurements of the pupils' weight and height. Statistical analyses were performed, i.e. Pearson's correlations, the two-step cluster analysis and the logistic regression analysis.

Most of the young people (80-90%) eat each of the main meals in the company of their parents at least once a week, 21% have breakfast with their parents every day, 41% - dinner, and 45% - supper. The frequency of family meals correlated negatively with the girls' BMI and the number of hours they spent watching television or at the computer, while positively with physical activity, regular meals and vegetable consumption in adolescents of both genders. The lowest mean values of BMI were found in a group of adolescents often eating family meals, the highest - in the group of young people who rarely ate family meals (over 20% of young people in this group were overweight), but the differences were statistically significant only for girls (p=0.025). The probability of less than 2 hours of sedentary behaviour daily, physical activity of at least 60 minutes per day and everyday vegetable and fruit consumption is twice as high in adolescents often consuming meals with their parents, and with the daily consumption of all the meals in this way - more than fourfold higher than in other groups.

Family meals treated as a predictor of a healthy lifestyle can indirectly protect adolescents from overweight and obesity. Promoting family meals should be an important method of preventing obesity, particularly among teenage girls.