Waterloo - A recent Canwest article written by Shannon Proudfoot highlights that regular family meals contribute to raising happy and healthy children.

A report states that benefits of "gathering around the table shows Canadian children in grades six to eight drink less pop, eat less fast food, skip fewer breakfasts and even think they make healthier food choices when out with their friends, if they dine more often with their families."

Results clearly contradict the notion that family meals are disappearing. "Seventy per cent of the 3,200 Ontario and Nova Scotia children in the study eat with at least one parent six or seven days a week."

Sarah Woodruff, author of the study and a professor of kinesiology and physical education at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. says that "We keep hearing that family meals are extinct or they're going by the wayside, they're not as important, but many of us who have done research in the area have found just the opposite."

Little Canadian research is on the subject.

However, other research shows a connection between family dining and less eating disorders, fewer drug and alcohol use, and better nutrition with higher grades, Woodruff says.

University of Minnesota medical school did a study in 2008 that indicated "adolescent girls who ate frequent meals with their families were half as likely to smoke, drink and use marijuana as their peers, though researchers were puzzled that boys didn't show the same effect."

Researchers are generally unsure exactly how family meals provide all these benefits, Woodruff indicated to Proudfoot. "It could be that eating with their families rather than in secret discourages eating disorder behaviours, or that there is a "carry-over effect" that helps children make healthier food choices with their friends because of what they learn at home, she says, but no one really knows."

Woodruff's interest in this research comes in part from growing up in a family of regular dinners and strong ties. "She didn't understand the benefits at the time "but now that I'm older I appreciate that we did," she says, and she and her husband keep up the tradition now."