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The importance of the family dinner is an obvious one. You can catch up with your spouse and kids, and, if you're lucky, get them to put down their cell phones for a few precious minutes. But two new studies show that a regular family meal can have a real impact on kids' health, even after they grow up.

In a study published in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers from the University of Minnesota had 2,287 teenagers report their eating habits in a survey, and then followed up 10 years later. At that point, 51% of participants were overweight and 22 percent of them were obese. After crunching the numbers, they found that teens who ate meals with their family three or four times a week were half as likely to grow up to be overweight. These numbers were controlled for factors like gender, age, race, and socioeconomic status.

The study notes that family meals are associated with eating more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Plus, family dinners provide a supportive emotional environment and a sense of security surrounding their eating habits. And kids can learn healthy eating habits by watching their parents at the table.

But it's not just the meals that lead to healthier kids. It's how you behave while at the dinner table. A separate study from the same team, published in Pediatrics, found that it's all about how you interact while you have that family meal.

Researchers observed 120 families from low-income and minority communities for eight days, videotaping their family meals. They studied how long the meal was, how family members interacted, and how they interacted with their food. This study found that families who interacted in a positive way (maintaining a warm, fun environment while praising kids for eating healthy) were less likely to have children who were overweight or obese. Plus, families that had shorter dinners were more likely to have overweight kids.

TELL US: Does your family eat dinner together every day?

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