Family dinner frequency, settings and sources, and body weight in US adults

•Most adults with family members at home ate family dinners at least 5 days per week.•Most adults ate home cooked family dinners and half ate takeout food at home.•Many ate family dinners at restaurants, fast food places or homes of relatives/friends.•Eating family dinners at fast food places was related to higher adult body weight.

Contemporary families and food systems are both becoming more dynamic and complex, and current associations between adult family meals and body mass index (BMI) are not well understood. This investigation took a new approach by examining diverse settings and sources of food for family dinners in relationship to BMI in a cross-sectional nationally representative survey of 360 US adults age 18–85 living with family members. In this sample, 89% of adults ate family dinners at least 5 days per week and almost all ate family dinners cooked and eaten at home. About half of these adults also ate family dinners at restaurants, fast food places, or ate takeout food at home, and less common were family dinners at homes of relatives or friends. Family dinners eaten at fast food places, but not other settings or sources, were significantly associated with higher BMI. Overall, adult family dinners were commonplace, usually involved home cooking, and when at fast food places may be related with higher adult body weights.