SynthesisAdvances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.)2016
A Review of the Structural Characteristics of Family Meals with Children in the United States.
Synthesis in Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.), 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Family Mealtimes: A Systematic Umbrella Review of Characteristics, Correlates, Outcomes and Interventions.Nutrients · 2023Pooled it
- Diet and Health Benefits Associated with In-Home Eating and Sharing Meals at Home: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Pooled it
- Family meal frequency and its association with food consumption and nutritional status in adolescents: A systematic review.PloS one · 2020Pooled it
- Randomized Controlled Trial Outcomes for HomeStyles-2, an Online Obesity Prevention Program for Families with Children in Middle Childhood.Nutrients · 2026Trial
- Supporting family meal frequency: Screening Phase results from the Simply Dinner Study.Appetite · 2022Trial
- Association Between Family Meal Frequency and Social and Emotional Skills Among Chinese Adolescents: Evidence from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS).Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Prevalence of daily family meals among children and adolescents from 43 countries.Maternal & child nutrition · 2025Article
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- Article
- Spillover from parent stress to family meals among diverse families: An ecological momentary assessment study.Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43) · 2024Article
- The buffet challenge: a behavioral assessment of eating behavior in adolescents with an eating disorder.Journal of eating disorders · 2024Article
- Maternal mental health is associated with children's frequency of family meals at 12 and 24 months of age.Maternal & child nutrition · 2024Article
- Family Meals and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors in Young Children.Current atherosclerosis reports · 2023Review
- Early school-age family meal characteristics matter for the later development of boys and girls.Dialogues in health · 2022Article
- Mothers' accounts of mealtime and feeding challenges for children with Tourette syndrome or persistent tic disorders.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- Dishing on dinner: a life course approach to understanding the family meal context among families with preschoolers.Public health nutrition · 2021Article
- Assessing Time of Eating in Commensality Research.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Review
- Assessing Commensality in Research.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Review
- Family Meals, Conviviality, and the Mediterranean Diet among Families with Adolescents.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Sleep, screen time, and family meal frequency in preschool children: A pilot study.The Nurse practitioner · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Family meals are associated with a range of positive outcomes among children and adolescents. There is inconsistency, however, in the way in which studies have defined and measured family meals. Therefore, a systematic review of the literature was conducted to determine how studies describe family meals with the use of structural characteristics. The current review focused on studies in the United States that included children ages 2-18 y. A total of 33 studies were identified that characterized family meals with the use of ≥1 of the following structural features: frequency or mean number of family meals per week, length of family meal, people present at meal, and where meals occurred. No study characterized family meals by using all 4 family meal features, whereas most studies (81%) characterized family meals by using frequency or mean number of meals per week. Findings not only provide an initial understanding of the structural features used to define family meals but also point to the importance of developing a more comprehensive, sensitive assessment that can accurately capture the complex and multidimensional nature of family meals.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.