Traditional family dinner helps beat obesity

A TRADITIONAL family dinner is being hailed as our best defence against alarming rates of childhood obesity. Child health experts told a Brisbane conference yesterday that families which ate and talked "as a unit" over the dinner table had better nutrition levels than those which did not. University of Newcastle health school associate professor Clare Collins said a two-year health survey being released today showed parents and children who started a healthy food program lost more weight than those who focused solely on exercise. Her survey of 165 obese children aged five to nine underlined the fact that parents were still the biggest influence on child nutritional health. "The most important thing you can do for your kids is to sit down at the table as a family," she said. Dr Collins said studies had yet to determine exactly... [read full story]