Project Eat

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SPH professor Dianne Neumark-Sztainer talks about teens and dieting.

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According to Project Eat, adolescents living in households that struggle to afford food are more likely to be overweight, report eating behaviors associated with obesity, and perceive greater barriers to eating healthfully.

Family meal power

What young people eat, when, and how can tell us worlds of information about them and their future.

More than a decade ago, SPH researcher Dianne Neumark-Stzainer began a study called Project EAT (Eating Among Teens). It surveyed middle and high school students (average age, 14.9 years) during the 1998-99 school year. Students were asked about their lifestyle choices and overall feelings of well-being, including how often they ate with their family.

Phase two of the study followed the same students during their transition to late adolescence and young adulthood.

What the studies found was that when a families eat together, it can increase better nutrition and decrease the risk for unhealthy weight control practices, substance use, sexual intercourse, and suicide in adolescents.

Family Meals can be a protective factor for adolescents

“Frequency of family meals was inversely associated with tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use; low grade point average; depressive symptoms; and suicide [thoughts and attempts],” says lead investigator Marla Eisenberg. “We found family mealtimes to be a potentially protective factor in the lives of adolescents for nearly all of these variables, particularly among adolescent girls.”

When looking at the students’ behavior over a five-year span, teen girls who ate five or more meals with their families each week in 1999 were significantly less likely to report engaging in extreme behavior like binge eating and self-induced vomiting in 2004. Adolescent boys did not show a similar pattern.

Eisenberg says a likely reason for this benefit is the family meal serving as a formal or informal “check-in” time, when parents can find out or ask their children what’s going on in their lives. “Family mealtimes may also serve as a marker for young people spending more time at home and away from negative peer influences or youth culture,” she says.

More findings from Project EAT:

• More than 66 percent of the teen girls whose parents encouraged them to diet remained overweight five years later, compared with only 43 percent of teen girls who were not encouraged to diet.
• Only 29.5 percent of females and 42.5 percent of males were found to be getting enough calcium in their teen years.
• Approximately one-third of teenage females and males surveyed were at or above the 85th percentile for weight.
• Over 5 years teens decreased their moderate and vigorous physical activity and increased their computer use.
• Vegetarianism was reported by about 6 percent of students.
• One in four teens report being teased about their weight at least a few times per year.

In August 2009, the NIH awarded Neumark-Sztainer a two-year, nearly $1.5 million grant to follow up Project EAT with new research. Called Project F-EAT (Families and Eating and Activity in Teens), it will help determine what interventions may be successful in preventing obesity among young people.