Shared family meals linked to lower disordered eating risk in Turkish adolescents

Adolescents who shared family meals at least three times per week, but not every day, had substantially lower odds of screening as high risk for disordered eating than those who shared meals only on weekends, according to a multicenter cross-sectional study of 522 adolescents attending outpatient clinics in Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara. The study, published in the Journal of Eating Disorders, also found that girls, older adolescents, and those reporting weaker mother–adolescent relationships had higher odds of high-risk status.

The research team, led by Özgür Karaarslan and colleagues, set out to estimate how common high-risk disordered eating is in a clinical adolescent sample and to examine its associations with family mealtime habits and parent–adolescent relationship characteristics. Disordered eating, which includes behaviors such as meal skipping, extreme food restriction, and unhealthy weight-control practices, is described by the authors as a growing public health concern among adolescents worldwide, in countries at all levels of economic development.

The study followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines and was conducted in outpatient clinics across three major Turkish cities. After excluding 17 questionnaires with 20 percent or more missing data, the final analytic sample comprised 522 adolescents aged 11 to 18 years, of whom 53.6 percent were female, with a mean age of 14.55 years.

Parent–adolescent relationship quality was evaluated with the Turkish-validated Adolescent–Parent Relationship Questionnaire. The researchers then used multivariable logistic regression to identify factors independently associated with high-risk disordered eating.

The headline prevalence figure was 9.6 percent, meaning roughly one in ten adolescents in the sample met the EAT-26 high-risk threshold. Four variables emerged as independently associated with high-risk status. Female sex carried more than double the odds compared with male sex, with an odds ratio of 2.44 (95 percent confidence interval: 1.15–5.20, p = 0.020). Each additional year of age was associated with higher odds, with an odds ratio of 1.22 per year (95 percent confidence interval: 1.02–1.46, p = 0.027).

Relationship quality also mattered. A lower positive mother–adolescent relationship score was independently associated with higher odds of high-risk disordered eating, with an odds ratio of 0.93 per point on the score (95 percent confidence interval: 0.88–0.99, p = 0.013), indicating that each additional point of positive relationship quality corresponded to slightly lower odds of high-risk status.

Compared with adolescents who reported sharing family meals only on weekends, those in the non-daily category of three or more shared meals per week had substantially lower odds of high-risk disordered eating, with an odds ratio of 0.05 (95 percent confidence interval: 0.01–0.20, p < 0.001). Daily family meals were also associated with lower odds, according to the study’s plain language summary.

The authors conclude that in this multicenter clinical sample, more frequent shared family meals were independently associated with lower odds of disordered eating risk, and that family mealtime practices therefore represent a modifiable factor that merits further study in adolescent nutrition and preventive health.

Important limitations apply to these findings. Because the study was cross-sectional, it captures a single point in time and cannot establish whether shared meals cause lower disordered eating risk or whether families affected by disordered eating simply eat together less often. The sample was clinic-based rather than drawn from the general population, so the results cannot be generalized to population-level effects. The authors state that longitudinal research is needed to determine whether increasing shared family meals can reduce disordered eating risk.

The association between meal frequency and risk was described by the authors as one of the clearest in their analysis, alongside the protective pattern seen for more positive mother–adolescent relationships, while the higher odds among girls and older adolescents are consistent with the demographic patterns reported in the study.

Subject of Research: Associations between shared family meals, parent–adolescent relationships, and disordered eating risk in adolescents

Article Title: Association of shared family meals with adolescent disordered eating risk: a multicenter cross-sectional study across three Turkish cities

Article References: Karaarslan, Ö., Cambaz Kurt, N., Güven, D., Tınastepe, T., Erol, C., Fedakar, A., Çifçi, A., Güner Atayoğlu, A., & Atayoğlu, A. T. (2026). Association of shared family meals with adolescent disordered eating risk: a multicenter cross-sectional study across three Turkish cities. Journal of Eating Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40337-026-01809-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40337-026-01809-1

Keywords: adolescent health, disordered eating, EAT-26, family meals, cross-sectional study, Türkiye, mother–adolescent relationship, eating attitudes, public health, logistic regression, Association, shared